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EDINBURGH, WILLIAM OLIPHANT & G! 



LIFE 



OF 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 



BARONET. 



BY THE 

REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
ii 

DUNDEE. 



EDINBURGH: 

WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. 

1870. 



£-331 



MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 



PREFACE. 




|HE purpose of the following work re- 
quires very little explanation. It was 
thought by its publishers — a view in 
which the author thoroughly coincided — that a 
popular life of Sir Walter Scott was a desidera- 
tum. There are indeed various lives of Sir Walter 
already. Lockhart's has long been the standard 
one, and continues to be justly regarded as a very 
able work, and as a mine of information on the 
subject. But it is too large, and, besides the per- 
sonalities which abound in it and rather lessen its 
value, it contains a mass of correspondence and 
minute details which seem somewhat irrelevant 
and uninteresting now, — Scott's letters being the 
dullest of all his productions. There are many 
smaller lives ; but they are in general meagre 
outlines. 






vi PREFACE. 

The author has sought to produce something 
between the large work of Lockhart and the 
slighter biographies. He has not catered for 
gossip, and his book will be found to contain little, 
although there are not a few new facts sprinkled 
throughout. It aims rather at being an accurate 
summary of the leading events in Scott's life, and 
a candid, full, and genial criticism on his principal 
works. How far its aim has been successfully- 
gained, the public must decide. 

The book, whatever be its defects, may be 
thought a ' word in season,' as connected in time 
with that centenary celebration which is at hand, 
and which may be regarded not merely as a 
tribute to Scott's memory, but as at once an 
acknowledgment and outcome of that large and 
loving spirit which is abroad in the age, and which 
has been partly the result of the extensive diffu- 
sion of Sir Walter's writings. 

Shakspeare says : 

' The evil that men do lives after them ; the good 
Is oft interred with their bones.' 

It has been otherwise with Scott. Whatever 
was small and narrow in his history and opinions 
is forgotten. His real nature, which was as broad 
and catholic as the sun, remains with us, and is 
still powerfully affecting the world. Sitting the 



PREFACE. vii 



other day under the shadow of his Edinburgh 
monument, with the glory of a rich September 
afternoon bathing the city which Scott loved so 
well, we thought that we had too long regarded 
him as a mirror of national manners and pecu- 
liarities, and that his true mission had been 
misunderstood. That was of a cosmopolitan and 
Christian character. And even as that splendid 
monument is now pointing to the most magnificent 
of landscapes, overhung by the most golden and 
benignant of skies, united together into one grand 
whole, his genius seemed to predict in its all-sided 
character a nobler harmony, a more thorough re- 
conciliation of the jarring elements in society and 
human nature, than we can at present conceive of, 
and leads us — undisturbed by the sad events of 
the time — to anticipate, though faintly and far off, 
that of which this beautiful day seems a prophecy 
and a pledge : 

1 The bridal of the earth and sky. 1 
Dundee, September 1870. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
SCOTT IN BOYHOOD, ........ I 

CHAPTER II, 

AT COLLEGE, AND MAKING HIMSELF, 19 

CHAPTER III. 

EARLY LOVE, LITERATURE, MARRIAGE, AND POETRY, . 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE BORDER MINSTRELSY, AND THE LAY OF THE LAST 

MINSTREL, 55 

CHAPTER V. 

MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS, 66 

CHAPTER VI. 

A RUN OF PERSONAL AND LITERARY SUCCESS, ... 79 



x CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 
ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD — GLIMPSE OF FAMILY, DOMESTIC 

CIRCUMSTANCES, AND HOME LIFE, .... 94 



CHAPTER VIII. 

vicissitudes in life, literature, and business — 

'waverley' launched, . . . . . .107 

CHAPTER IX. 

AT SEA, 117 

CHAPTER X. 

THE FIRST THREE WAVERLEY NOVELS, . . . 1 28 

CHAPTER XL 

SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS, I4I 

CHAPTER XII. 

CONTINUED SUCCESS, WITH PRELIMINARY SHADOWS, . 151 

CHAPTER XIII. 

CULMINATION OF FAME AND FORTUNE — 'iVANHOE' AND 

BARONETCY, 1 63 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SCOTT AT HOME, AND AGAIN IN LONDON, . . . 1 74 



CONTENTS. xi 



CHAPTER XV. 

PAGE 
SCOTT'S RELATION TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES, GOETHE, 

BYRON, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, AND THE REST, . 1 86 



CHAPTER XVI. 

'CARLE, NOW THE KING'S COME,' I97 

CHAPTER XVII. 

SCOTT IN IRELAND, 208 

CHAPTER XVIIL 

DECAY AND DECADENCE BEGUN, ..... 224 

CHAPTER XIX. 

UNIVERSAL SMASH, . 237 

CHAPTER XX. 

1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET,' 248 

CHAPTER XXI. 

'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE,' . 260 

CHAPTER XXII. 

STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE, . 272 

CHAPTER XXIIL 

THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN, 284 



xii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

PAGE 

VISIT TO THE CONTINENT, 297 



CHAPTER XXV. 

RETURN HOME AND DEATH, 3II 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

SCOTT, THE MAN AND POET, 333 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL, 348 

CONCLUSION. 

THE COMING CENTENARY, 377 






CHAPTER I. 



SCOTT IN BOYHOOD. 




HE child is father of the man ;' and this 
is true of none more, or so much, as of 
Sir Walter Scott. Nay, in him, as in 
many great men, the man and the child refuse to 
be separated : they are always one. In his boy- 
hood we find clear and full exemplification of all 
his noble qualities, his enthusiasm, warm-hearted 
affection, bold manly feelings, sense, honesty, and 
invincible perseverance. Afterwards these charac- 
teristics ripened and expanded, but they never 
changed ; and hence a unity, amidst great breadth, 
in Scott as a man and as a writer, which has been 
rarely equalled, and perhaps never surpassed. 

Walter Scott — the possessor of a name and 
fame only inferior in extent, and probably equal 
in duration, to those of Homer and Shakspeare — 
was born in Edinburgh on the 15 th of August 



WALTER SCOTT. 



1 77 1, the same day of the month as had been sig- 
nalized two years before by the birth of Napoleon 
Bonaparte. He was the son of Walter Scott, 
W.S., and Anne Rutherford, daughter of Dr. John 
Rutherford, Professor of Medicine in the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh, j Sir Walter, by his father, was 
descended from a family on the Border, of old 
extraction, which had branched off from the main 
stem of the house of Buccleugh, and produced 
some remarkable characters : such as Auld Wat 
of Harden, famous in Border story and in the song 
of his great descendant ; and Beardie (so called 
from an enormous beard, which — as was also said 
of Thomas Dalziel the Cavalier general — he never 
cut, in token of his regret for the banished house 
of Stuart), who was the great-grandfather of the 
poet. Through his mother he was connected with 
two other ancient families : the Bauld Rutherfords, 
mentioned in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
der ; and the Swintons, one of whom (Sir John) 
is extolled by Froissart as having unhorsed, at the 
battle of Beauge in France, the Duke of Clarence, 
brother to Henry, and is the hero of Scott's own 
poetic sketch, Halidon Hill. Through the Swin- 
tons Scott could also trace a connection between 
himself and William Alexander Earl of Stirling, 
the well-known poet and dramatist. Sir Walter 



BOYHOOD. 



was proud of his lineage, proud of his connection 
with the Border, and almost looked on Harden as 
his birthplace. He for many years made regularly 
an autumnal excursion to the tower, picturesquely 
situated in a deep, dark, and narrow glen, through 
which a mountain brook discharges its waters into 
the Borthwick, a tributary of the Teviot. To this 
tower Auld Wat had brought home his beautiful 
bride Mary Scott, the 'Flower of Yarrow,' — the 
subject of many a Border ditty, and whose gentle 
disposition contrasted piquantly with the rough 
valour and masculine virtues of her lord. It was 
she who, when the last bullock stolen (' conveyed,' 
we will it call) from the English pastures was con- 
sumed, set before the assembled guests a pair of 
clean spurs, as a broad hint that they must work 
if they expected any more to eat. Beardie, too, 
he delights to commemorate for his devoted Jaco- 
bitism, his learning, and his intimacy with Dr. Pit- 
cairn ; although he admits that his political zeal, 
and the intrigues and scrapes it led him into withal, 
were the ruin of his fortunes, and nearly cost him 
his head. From his ancestors Scott derived some 
of his principal peculiarities — his ardent attachment 
to Scotland, his lingering love for the Pretender, 
his sympathy with martial enterprise and spirit, 
and a certain ' hairbrained sentimental trace ' 



WALTER SCOTT. 



which took eccentric shapes in his predecessors, 
but in him became the fire of the great lyrical 
x bard. 

Beardie left three sons, and the second — Robert 
Scott — was the. grandfather of the poet. He 
leased from Mr. Scott of Harden, his relative and 
chief, the farm of Sandyknowe. This is situated 
about a bowshot from the remarkable tower of 
Smailholm — a tower which figures in the poet's 
M amnion and Eve of St. John. It stands, a ruin, 
on the top of a rock of considerable height, sur- 
rounded by an amphitheatre of rugged hills, and 
commanding a most varied and magnificent pro- 
spect, including Dryburgh, where Scott himself 
now lies, ' not dead, but sleeping ;' Melrose, on 
which his genius shed a light more magical than 
even the pale moonshine in which it shows so 
sweetly ; Mertoun, with its deep groves — the seat 
of the Harden family ; the Broom of the Cowden- 
knowes ; 

' Bonny Teviotdale, and Cheviot mountains blue ;' 

the Eildon Hills ('Yielding Hills' some call them, 
since at every step almost of view they change 
their aspect, like shifting clouds ; ' Elden Hills ' 
others, because there of old time blazed beacon- 
fires), with their three wizard peaks, belted by 



BOYHOOD. 



Bowden (Thomas Aird's birthplace), Newtown, 
Melrose, and other haunted spots ; the Merse, 
with the Lammermoors rising like an island in 
the midst, where the great novelist was to fix the 
scene of one of the grandest tragedies in any lan- 
guage ; and relieved against the distant horizon, 
that storm of mountains which gathers around the 
wanderings of the Ettrick, Gala, and Yarrow. Over 
this landscape — where it has been said every field 
had its battle and every rivulet its song, we add 
every peak its watch-fire and every hillside its peel 
— Scott in boyhood often l gazed himself away/ 
and would realize both the spectacle and the mood 
of the heroine whom he was afterwards to portray 
in the beautiful words : 

* The lady looked in mournful mood, 
Looked over hill and vale, 
O'er Mertoun's wood and Tweed's fair flood, 
And all down Teviotdale.' 

Robert Chambers, in his interesting Illustrations 
of the Waver ley Novels, will have it that S mail- 
holm agrees in the leading features with Avenel 
Castle ; and there are certainly some points of 
resemblance, especially in the circumstance that 
the tower has once been surrounded by a lake, 
and that there are certain remains which still point 
to the existence of a drawbridge and a causeway 



WALTER SCOTT. 



crossing a moat. The view, however, as described 
by Scott in The Abbot, is not the same with that 
we have sought to portray above ; and besides, in 
a note to The Monastery, Scott says : ' It were 
vain to search near Melrose for any such castle as 
is here described. But in Yetholm Loch there are 
the remains of a fortress called Lochside Tower, 
which, like the supposed Castle of Avenel, is built 
upon an island, and connected with the land by a 
causeway. It is much smaller than the Castle of 
Avenel is described.' 

Robert Scott married a Miss Halyburton, a lady 
sprung from an ancient family in Berwickshire, — a 
family which enjoyed as portion of its patrimonial 
possessions a part of Dryburgh, including the ruins 
of the Abbey. This estate would have descended 
to Scott through his father, but was lost by the 
foolish speculations of a granduncle ; and ' thus,' 
he says in his autobiography, l we have nothing left 
of Dryburgh, although my father's maternal in- 
heritance, but the right of stretching our bones, 
where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but 
my own glances over these pages,' — words written 
with a mixture of sadness, pride, and dignity very 
characteristic of the author. Robert Scott's eldest 
son was Walter, the poet's father. He was the 
first of the Scott family who ever adopted a town 



BOYHOOD. 



life. He was born in 1729, educated as a W.S., 
and although not much fitted naturally, either by 
astuteness or by temper, for the profession, yet 
rose to eminence in it by dint of probity and 
diligence. There is an epitaph in the Howff 
(burying-place) of Dundee : 

* Here lies a writer and an honest man : 
Providence works wonders nows and than? 

Scott's father was one of these rare marvels of 
Divine Providence, being thoroughly honest. He 
was a man of somewhat distant and formal man- 
ners, but of singular kindness of heart, of sterling 
worth, and of deep-toned piety after the Calvinistic 
mode. He had a noble presence, handsome fea- 
tures, a sweet expression of countenance ; and, as 
Sir Walter says, ' he looked the mourner so well,' 
that he was often invited to funerals, and seems 
to have positively enjoyed those monotonous and 
melancholy formalities connected with Scottish 
interments, for which his son has expressed in his 
journal such disgust, and which he has limned in 
his Guy Mannering with such ludicrous fidelity. 
Old Fairford in Redgauntlet is unquestionably a 
graphic though slightly coloured sketch of the 
elder Scott by his son. His mother was well 
educated, as the times then went, not at all comely 



8 WALTER SCOTT. 



in aspect, short in stature, and somewhat stiff in 
manners. She lived to a great age. Their first 
six children (including a Walter) died in infancy. 
The first who survived was Robert. He became 
an officer in the East India Company's service, 
and fell a victim to the climate. The second, 
John, was a major in the army, and lived long on 
his half-pay in Edinburgh. The third was the 
poet. The fourth was a daughter, of a somewhat 
flighty temperament, Anne by name, who was 
cut off in 1 80 1. The fifth was Thomas, a man of 
much humour and excellent parts, who went to 
Canada as paymaster to the 70th Regiment, and 
died there. He was at one time suspected of 
being author, in whole or part, of the Waverley 
Novels. The sixth was Daniel, the scapegrace of 
the family, whose conduct was in the last degree 
imprudent, and whose fate was disastrous : he had 
in the West Indies disgraced himself by coward- 
ice, and died on his return in 1806. Sir Walter 
disowned him, and put on no mourning at the 
news of his death, — conduct which he thought 
afterwards harsh and unfeeling, and bitterly re- 
gretted. Conachar, in the Fair Maid of Perth, 
has, Lockhart thinks, some traits of this poor 
unfortunate. 

Walter Scott was born in a house belonging to 



BOYHOOD. 



his father at the head of College Wynd, which was 
afterwards pulled down to make room for a part of 
the new College. He was an uncommonly healthy 
child till eighteen months old, when he was affected 
with a teething fever, at the close of which he was 
found to have lost the use of his right leg. Blisters 
and other topical remedies were applied to no pur- 
pose. He was at last, by the advice of his grand- 
father Dr. Rutherford, sent out to Sandyknowe, 
in the hope that air and exercise might remove his 
lameness. There he had "the first consciousness of 
existence, and remembered himself, in conformity 
with some quack nostrum, wrapped up repeatedly 
in the skin of a sheep while still warm from the 
carcase of the animal, to encourage him to crawl, 
— a position in which he bears a certain ludicrous 
resemblance to his own hermit Brian, in the Lady 
of the Lake, enclosed in the skin of a white bull, 
and let down to the brink of a cataract to see 
visions and dream dreams of dreadful augury : it 
is the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous 
inverted. This strange expedient failed. Scott 
owed much, however, to his residence at Sandy- 
knowe. He enjoyed the care of his venerable 
grandfather, now somewhat stricken in years. His 
grandmother, and his aunt Janet Scott, told him 
tales and sung him songs about the old Border 



io WALTER SCOTT. 



thieves, Wat of Harden, Wight Willie of Aik- 
wood, Jamie Telfor of the fair Dodhead, the Deil 
of Littledean, and their merry exploits ; and thus 
sowed in his mind the seeds of future Deloraines, 
Clinthill Christies, and Robin Hoods. A neigh- 
bouring farmer had witnessed the execution of the 
Jacobite rebels at Carlisle : he recounted it to Scott ; 
and to this tale of horror, poured into the ear of the 
boy poet, we are indebted for the trial and death 
scenes at the close of Waver ley, — perhaps the most 
thrilling and powerful tragic matter, out of Shak- 
speare, in the language. The American war was 
then raging ; and to the weekly bulletins about its 
fluctuating progress, brought to Sandyknowe by his 
uncle Thomas Scott, factor at Danesford, the little 
lame child did seriously incline his ear, and his 
cheek glowed and his eye kindled when he heard 
of any success on the part of the British arms ; 
so early did the Tory throb begin to beat within 
him. Some old books, too, lay on the window seat 
— Antomathes (a forgotten but ingenious fiction), 
Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany, and Josephus — 
and were read to him during the dim days and the 
long nights of winter. He learned, from hearing 
the ballad of Hardyknute read, to recite it from 
memory, and used to spout it aloud, to the annoy- 
ance of the worthy parish minister, Dr. Duncan, 



BOYHOOD. ii 



when he called. ' One may as well speak in the 
mouth of a cannon as where that child is/ ex- 
claimed the testy divine. To this we probably owe 
Scott's life-long admiration and amiable overesti- 
mate of this ballad, which he recited to Byron with 
such effect, that the poet looked as if he had just 
received a challenge. With all deference to Scott, 
we have never been able to perceive any transcen- 
dent merit in 1 Hardyhmte : we think it wordy and 
diffuse, and infinitely prefer The Flowers of the 
Forest, The Dowie Dens of Yarrow, and the ancient 
ballad of Roncesvalles. His Aunt Janet stood much 
in relation to Scott as Betty Davidson did to Burns 
— was his chief instructress, and the true nurse 
within him of the poet. !JHe began, in spite of his 
lame limb, to stand, walk, and run, and his general 
health was confirmed by the pure mountain air. 
Previous to this, an old shepherd, Sandy Ormis- 
toun, was accustomed to carry him to the hills, 
where he contracted a strong attachment to the 
woolly people, — an attachment which never for- 
sook him. One Tibby Hunter described him as a 
sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the 
house, and said that the young ewe-milkers de- 
lighted to carry him about on their backs among 
the crags. He had no greater pleasure than in 
rolling about all day long in the midst of the 



12 WALTER SCOTT. 



flocks, and he knew every sheep and lamb by head- 
mark. On one occasion, it is said, he was forgotten 
among the knolls. A thunder-storm came on. In 
alarm, they sought for the boy, and found him, 
not weeping or crying out, like the Goblin Page, 
'Lost! lost! lost!' but lying on his back looking 
at the lightning, clapping his hands at each suc- 
cessive flash, and exclaiming, 'Bonnie! bonnie!' 
It were a fine subject for a painter, l The Minstrel 
Child lost in a Border thunder-storm ;' and his 
attitude in the story reminds us of Gray's noble 
lines about Shakspeare in his Progress of Poesy : 

1 Far from the sun and summer gale, 
In thy green lap was nature's darling laid. 
What time where lucid Avon strayed, 
To him the mighty mother did unveil 
Her awful face ; the dauntless child 
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.' 

When in his fourth year, Scott accompanied his 
Aunt Janet to Bath, where it was hoped the waters 
would benefit his lameness. He journeyed from 
Leith to London in a smack called the Duchess 
of Buccleugh, Captain Beatson. (A lady named 
Wright boasted long after waggishly to Joanna 
Baillie, that she had been once Walter Scott's bed- 
fellow ; the irregularity, however, having taken 
place in the Leith smack, and the Eneas being 



BOYHOOD. 13 



only four years of age !) In London he saw the 
usual sights, which stamped themselves with un- 
common vividness on his memory, so that when he 
visited the metropolis again he had hardly any- 
thing new to see. At Bath he lived a year, but 
derived little benefit from the waters. He attended, 
however, while there, a dame's school, and never, 
he says, had a 'more regular teacher of reading/ 
although he got a few lessons in Edinburgh 
afterwards. He met John Home, the author of 
Douglas, who, along with his lady, was residing 
there. His Uncle Robert, who joined the party 
afterwards, took his little nephew to most of the 
amusements in the city, including the theatre, 
where, at the sight of Orlando and Oliver, in As 
You Like it, quarrelling, he screamed out, 'Ar'n't 
they brothers ? ' — a story reminding us of young 
Byron in the Aberdeen theatre, when Petruchio 
was trying to force down on Kate the paradox of 
the moon being the sun, roaring out, ' But I say it 
is the meen, sir ! ' Bath, too, which in all but the 
neighbourhood of the Grampians may be called 
the Perth, or Fair City, of England, he seems to 
have admired exceedingly. 

From it he came back to Edinburgh, went thence 
to his beloved early haunt of Sandyknowe ; and we 
find him in his eighth year spending a few weeks 



14 WALTER SCOTT. 



at Prestonpans, enjoying sea-bathing, and encoun- 
tering an old military veteran named Dalgetty (a 
significant name, as the readers of the Legend of 
Montrose know full well), who became fond of 
Scott, and, like the soldier in Goldsmith, 

' Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.' 

It is interesting to observe how not a few of the 
familiar names known to him in his youth or boy- 
hood have been preserved on his written page, and 
are now classical. Thus Meg Dodds was the real 
name of a woman, or ' Luckie,' in Howgate, 'who 
brewed good ale for gentlemen.' In the account 
of a Galloway trial, in which Scott was counsel, 
occurs the name ' Mac-Guffog,' afterwards that of 
the famous turnkey in Guy Mannering. The 
name ' Durward ' may still be seen on the signs of 
Arbroath and Forfar, and Scott had doubtless met 
it there ; as well as that of ' Prudfute, or Proudfoot/ 
in or near Perth ; ' Morton/ in the lists of the west- 
ern Whigs ; and ' Gilfillan/ in the catalogue of the 
prisoners in Dunnottar Castle. Nothing, in fact, 
that ever flashed on the eye or vibrated on the ear 
of this extraordinary man but was in some form or 
other reproduced in his writings. It was probably 
the same with Shakspeare, although the most of 
the data on the subject are lost ; and Mrs. Quickly, 



BOYHOOD. 15 



Master Barnardine, Claudio, Shallow, Sir Andrew 
Aguecheek, and Falconbridge, seem all old ac- 
quaintances of the poet. 

In 1778, Scott, having first got a few lessons from 
one Leechman and one French, was sent to the 
High School, under the charge of Luke Frazer, 
whom he describes as a worthy man and a capital 
scholar. Thence he passed to the rector's class, 
taught by the celebrated Dr. Adam. This remark- 
able person had not a little of his namesake Parson 
Adams, in Fielding, about him. He was a simple- 
minded, sincere, absent individual, as well as a 
profound scholar ; just the kind of man, like the 
parson when regretting that he had lost his calf- 
skin iEschylus, to condole himself with the reflec- 
tion, that as it was dark, it was impossible for him 
to have seen to read it. It was another kind of 
night which was descending on Alexander Adam 
when he uttered his memorable last saying, ' It is 
getting dark ; you may go home, boys.' His life, 
otherwise a useful, laborious, and happy one, was 
embittered first of all by the rude usage he met 
with from William Nicol, Burns' clever but coarse- 
minded associate, who was an under-teacher in the 
school, and who even on one occasion waylaid and 
assaulted the rector ; and secondly, by the obloquy 
to which his republican principles, which he avowed 



16 WALTER SCOTT. 

on all occasions, and taught in his school, exposed 
him. His works, Roman Antiquities, Grammar 
of Ancient Geography, etc., show vast and very 
exact learning, and were once popular schoolbooks. 
Adam is said to have appreciated Scott's amazing 
memory, and frequently called him up to answer 
questions about dates ; and although neither he nor 
the other teachers had any suspicion of his genius, 
he pronounced him better acquainted than any of 
his contemporaries with the meaning, if not with 
the words, of the classical authors. He encouraged 
him also to make translations from Homer and 
Virgil. One or two trifling pieces of verse by him 
of this date have been discovered. But on the 
whole, although not a dunce, Scott was, as he says, 
an ' incorrigibly idle imp,' constantly glancing like 
a meteor from the bottom to the top of the form, 
and vice versa, and shone more in the yards — the 
High School playgrounds — than in the class. Not- 
withstanding his infirmity, he was the bravest of 
football players, the swiftest of racers, the strongest 
of pugilists, the most persevering in snowball bickers, 
the most daring climber of the kittle nine steps (a 
pass of peril leading along the dark brow of the 
Castle rock), and the most dexterous and strategic 
commander in the mimic battles fought in the 
Crosscauseway between the children of the mob 



BOYHOOD. 17 



and those of the better citizens. Many poets, such 
as Cowper and Shelley, have been overborne and 
become broken-hearted amidst the rough play of a 
public school. But the Scott, the Byron, and the 
Wilson, find it their element ; and their early supe- 
riority in sports and pastimes is an augury of their 
future greatness, and a prelibation of the manhood 
of their character and the all-sidedness of their 
genius. 

Previous to this, a lady in all points qualified to 
appreciate genius, the accomplished Mrs. Cock- 
burn, the authoress of the modern version of The 
Flowers d the Forest, had met Scott in his father's 
house in George Square, and thus describes him : 
'I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He 
has the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever 
saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when 
I went in. I made him read on : it was the de- 
scription of a shipwreck. His passion rose with 
the storm. He lifted up his eyes and hands. 
" There's the mast gone," says he ; " crash it goes : 
they will all perish ! " After his agitation he turns 
to me : " This is too melancholy," says he, " I must 
read you something more amusing." When taken 
to bed last night, he told his aunt that he liked that 
lady. " What lady ?" says she. « Why, Mrs. Cock- 
burn ; for I think she is a virtuoso, like myself." ' 



18 WALTER SCOTT. 

From Adam's tuition Scott would have instantly 
gone to College, had it not been that his health 
became delicate, and his father was induced to 
send him to Kelso. There, being once more 
under the kind care of his Aunt Janet, he added 
to the stores of his reading, which in Edin- 
burgh had been very miscellaneous. He became 
acquainted with Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 
which he read under the shade of a splendid 
Platanus, or Oriental Plane, a huge hill of leaves 
in his aunt's garden ; while attending the school 
of one Lancelot he increased considerably his 
stock of classical lore ; and he made the acquaint- 
ance of James Ballantyne, a man whose fortunes 
were afterwards so closely linked with his own, 
who seemed born to be his amanuensis and 
literary factotum, and in whose company, now in 
the school, and now when wandering along the 
banks of the Tweed, he began to exercise his 
unrivalled gift of telling stories. At Kelso, too, a 
spot distinguished by its combination of beauties, 
the Tweed and Teviot beside it melting in music 
into each other's arms, and with noble mansions and 
ancient abbeys in the background, his eyes were 
more fully opened to the beauties of that Scottish 
nature of which he became the most ideal, yet 
minute, the most lingering and loving depictor. 



CHAPTER II. 



AT COLLEGE, AND MAKING HIMSELF. 




^HEN Byron felt that he had ceased to be 
a boy, it gave him, we are told, a pang 
of the most exquisite anguish. What 
Scott's feelings at this era were we are not par- 
ticularly informed ; but we suspect that it was 
with a deep sigh that he, too (in 1784), left the 
shade of his Platanus for that of his Alma Mater, 
and exchanged the delightful pages of Percy for 
the reading of the Latin and Greek classics under 
Professors Hill and Dalziel. In Latin he became 
a fair proficient ; Greek he hated so intensely, that 
he was called by his fellow-students the ' Greek 
Blockhead.' Glorying in his shame, he wrote an 
essay, filled with all kinds of useless learning, in 
which he preferred Ariosto to Homer, and threw 
ignorant contempt on the fine old language of the 
latter. Had Sir Daniel Sandford been his professor, 

JO 



20 WALTER SCOTT. 

how his beautiful face would have rayed out wrath, 
1 as through his veins ran lightning,' at the presump- 
tuous lad, although his anger would have been short- 
lived, and he would have soon recognised his talent 
and independent spirit. Dalziel, whose sole claim 
to distinction lay in a collection of Greek extracts, 
told Scott that a dunce he was, and a dunce he 
would remain, — 'a verdict/ says Scott, ' which he 
lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy at our 
literary club at Fortune's.' As it was, Scott forgot 
the very Greek alphabet, and afterwards bitterly 
regretted his early neglect of his Greek studies. 
We cannot say that we share much in this regret. 
Scott was naturally Gothic in his tastes. The only 
writer in Greek with whom his genius could ever 
have had much sympathy was Homer ; and he 
was in many points a Homer himself: only, had 
he known more Greek, he might, in his ballad 
rhyme, have written the best conceivable transla- 
tion of the Iliad. 

Besides the Latin and Greek, he attended the 
Ethical (Logic), the Mathematical, the Moral Philo- 
sophy, and the Historical Classes, as well as those 
of the Civil and Municipal Law. From Dugald 
Stewart's tuition he derived much benefit, and 
speaks of his striking and impressive eloquence 
as riveting the attention of the most volatile 



AT COLLEGE. 21 



student. Most that now read Dugald Stewart 
vote him diffuse and languid, with much elegance, 
but little point or power ; but all who heard him 
seem to have been profoundly impressed by his 
oratory, which probably owed much to his manner, 
his presence, and the excellence of his private 
character. Scott's real university was that library 
of strangest selection, and most miscellaneous 
variety, which he was piling up, partly on his 
shelves, and partly in the roomy chambers of 
his brain ; and, like many other great men who 
have attended school and college, he was in reality 
a self-taught man. He read the romances and 
poetry of the South, he made himself an excel- 
lent French and Italian scholar, and subsequently 
became tolerably versed in German too. He ran- 
sacked the dusty shelves of old bookshops and 
circulating libraries ; and in those repositories of 
forgotten lore he enjoyed occasional glimpses of 
the literary characters who frequented them. 

Often, in the experience of a young man of 
letters, the real instructor is not a professor at 
all, but some student of his own standing, whom 
he has selected on a principle of natural affinity, 
with whom he reads favourite authors, goes to 
hear celebrated preachers, and, above all, com- 
munes with in those delicious private walks which 



WALTER SCOTT. 



in youth are so dear. Thus Hall and Mackintosh 
conversed as they wandered along the banks of 
the Dee and the Don, and were saluted by the 
inferior students as ' Plato and Herodotus.' Thus 
young Wordsworth and Coleridge talked to each 
other 'far above singing,' or schemed the Anciente 
Mai'inere. Thus Byron and Charles Skinner Mat- 
thews speculated and revelled at Newstead Abbey. 
These men were much about the same intellectual 
level, which was not the case with Scott and his 
associate, John Irving, W.S. Both, however, had 
some tastes in common. They were fond of 
repeating old legends, and began by and by to 
invent and recount stories of their own in imita- 
tion. And in weaving these pleasant yarns they 
spent many a holiday hour, by sunlight and by 
moonlight too, around Arthur's Seat and Salisbury 
Crags. 

In conjunction with Mr Irving, too, he read 
much Italian, and even began to turn some of 
its treasures into English verse. One of these 
was Guiscard and Matilda; and Lockhart has pre- 
served some verses, headed ' To Mr Walter Scott, 
on reading his poem of Guiscard and Matilda, 
inscribed to Miss Keith of Ravelston.' The writer, 
he thinks, was evidently a woman, and he thinks 
she was Scott's old admirer, Mrs. Cockburn. 



AT COLLEGE. 23 



On the 15th of May 1786, Scott was bound 
apprentice to his father as W.S., and from that 
day bade farewell to his academical studies. He 
wrote about this time a poem of 1600 lines, en- 
titled The Conquest of Granada, which, so soon as 
it was finished, he committed to the flames. This 
and two or three love trifles, and the translation 
commended by Mrs. Cockburn, were, up to 1796, 
his only poetical productions. In 1786 there 
occurred the memorable meeting between Scott 
and Burns. Such momentary intersections of the 
orbits of literary stars, while the one is rising and 
the other beginning to set, are as uncommon as 
they are interesting. Thus met Ovid with Virgil, 
and Milton with Galileo, of which it has been 
said : 

1 With what comparison shall we compare 
The meeting ot the matchless sage and bard ? 
Transit of Mercury across the Sun — 
Young Mercury across his lather's brow ? 
Say rather, transit of that comet vast 
Which erst in autumn pierced our British skies 
And crossed Arcturus ; spectacle sublime ! 
Which no gyration of the dancing heavens 
Shall e'er in grandeur or in grace surpass. 
Oh ! strange to see the wanderer advance, 
Fearless in courage, radiant with hope, 
Toward that ancient and serenest star, 
As if to look into the Eye of God. 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Thus met the twain at Florence, soon to part : 

The one to England bound, to fight the cause 

Of Freedom, not with sword, but with a pen 

Clear, bright, and piercing as Damascus blade ; 

The other to remain in darkness pent, 

Till to his eye the telescope of Death 

His Lord applied, and lo ! not Night, but Day/ 

Less singular in circumstances, and less august 
in aspect, the meeting of the two brightest 
geniuses of Caledonia. It was at a literary dinner 
party at Professor Fergusson's that Scott saw the 
boast, pride, and shame of Scotland — the truest 
and the worst used man our country ever pro- 
duced. We all remember the effect produced on 
Burns' mind by the print of Bunbury, representing 
the soldier lying dead in the snow, his widow 
beside him, and a child in her arms ; and how the 
eyes of the hapless bard of Coila glowed with pity, 
passion, and enthusiasm as he read the line which 
Scott told him was Langhorne's — 

' The child of misery baptized in tears/ 

That look, and the tears through which it shone, 
haunted Scott's memory to the last ; and those 
ardent eyes of the poet, which gleamed like dewy 
stars, to him never set. Nor did he forget the 
words of Burns to himself, 'You will be a man 
yet,' although he calls it an expression of mere 



AT COLLEGE. 25 



civility. He pitied Burns' unhappy career, but 
his own in the long-run was not much more for- 
tunate. He too, as well as Burns, was Tinned, 
though in a different way. It is melancholy to 
remember that this is true of so many besides 
poets. How often do we hear it said, ' It is such 
and such a person's ruin,' almost every life being 
in some point or other a failure, and each vessel on 
the sad sea of time being more or less a wreck ! 
Indeed, some may think that in all Burns' dark 
career there was nothing more dismal than the 
disastrous reversal of the fortunes, and the pre- 
mature eclipse of the glorious mind, of Sir Walter 
Scott. 

While serving his apprenticeship to his father, 
Scott commenced those yearly visits to the High- 
lands which were destined to exert such power on 
the development of his genius. He saw from the 
Wicks o' Baigley, a point to the south of Perth, 
that superb view of the winding Tay and its rich- 
valley ; the bold adjacent hills of Kinnoul, Kin- 
fauns, and Moncreiff ; the ' Fair City ' and the 
distant Grampians, including Benvoirlich on the 
west, Schiehallion in the north, and Mounts Bat- 
tock and Blair in the east, which struck his young 
fancy, and which he has described in one of the 
most eloquent pages of his St. Valentines Day. 



26 WALTER SCOTT. 

Stewart of Invernahyle, a client of his father's — an 
old Jacobite, who had measured swords with Rob 
Roy, and been out with Mar and with ' Charlie ' — 
invited the son to his Highland home, where his 
experiences somewhat resembled those of Waver- 
ley with Fergus M'lvor, and of Francis Osbal- 
distone in the M'Gregor's country. He found the 
Highlands in a very primitive condition indeed : 
the daughters of a laird loading a cart with manure 
in the morning, and reappearing in the evening in 
full dress, with radiant complexions, and display- 
ing no little wit, intelligence, and good breeding ; 
the principal dish in the first course of the dinner 
being a gigantic haggis, borne into the hall in a 
wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, while the 
piper strutted fiercely behind them blowing a 
tempest of dissonance ! Ever afterwards Scott's 
heart and imagination were equally divided be- 
tween the Border and the Perthshire Highlands. 
It is remarkable that the scene of almost all his 
Highland novels, certainly of his best ones — of 

Waver ley, of Rob Roy, the Legend of Montrose, 
and of The Fair Maid of Perth (not to speak of 

The Lady of the Lake) — is laid in the Yorkshire 
of Scotland. There was one other region in our 
country which had afterwards, as we shall see, a 
still stronger interest for him, namely Kincardine- 



AT COLLEGE. 27 



shire, the birthplace of his first lost love ; but the 
painful recollections connected with the story per- 
haps repelled him, and he never does more than 
allude incidentally to some of its scenes — such as 
Cairna Mount and Clochmaben. But his associa- 
tions with Perthshire were all delightful : it he 
visited in his fresh boyhood, his heart beating with 
enthusiasm, his brow throbbing with inspiration, — 
'with hope,' as Lamb says of Coleridge, 'rising 
before him like a fiery column, the dark side not 
yet tinned! And while the inhabitants of the 
Border may be proud that Smailholm, Carter- 
haugh, and the Eildons attracted him about as 
strongly as his own romantic town, the Bass Rock, 
and Arthur's Seat, Perthshire men are quite as 
grateful for the new glory which he poured oh the 
Trosachs, Loch Tay, Craighall, the ' hazel shade ' 
of Glenartney, and the tall peak of Benvoirlich 
with the ' red beacon ' of the morning burning upon 
its summit. 

In the second year of his apprenticeship, accord- 
ing to Scott himself (Lockhart fixes it a little 
earlier), one of Scott's blood-vessels burst ; and he 
was put on a severe regimen and confined to bed, 
restricted, though it was in a cold spring, to a 
single blanket, bled, blistered, and fed on vege- 
tables. His only resources were chess and read- 



23 WALTER SCOTT. 

ing. He plunged now into a wide sea of books, 
exhausting libraries, and driving their keepers to 
their wit's end to supply his cravings ; passing 
from novels, romances, and poems to voyages and 
travels, and thence to histories and to memoirs, 
and thus preparing himself for the future exi- 
gencies of his literary life as effectually on his 
quiet bed, where he was not suffered to speak 
above his breath, as when rambling through the 
mountains of Perthshire with Invernahyle, or 
' making himself with Shortreed among the tra- 
ditionary wilds of Liddesdale. He illustrated the 
battles he read of by arranging shells, seeds, and 
pebbles to represent the movements of encounter- 
ing armies, using mimic cross-bows and a small 
model fortress. By the assistance, too, of a com- 
bination of mirrors, he was enabled to look out 
at the Meadows, and see the troops marching to 
exercise, which must have been a great relief to his 
weary hours. After some months he recovered, 
resumed his labours in the office, and bade a long 
farewell to disease and medicine. 

In 1788 he went to attend the class of Civil Law. 
Here, besides his old friends Irving and Fergusson, 
he met with some other young men who united 
literary tastes with legal aspirations. In later days 
we have seen at the bar chiefly two classes — literary 



AT COLLEGE. 29 



men who had no law, and plodding legalists who 
had no genius. Before Scott's time, mere lawyers 
constituted almost the whole tribe. But Scott, 
Jeffrey, Cranstoun, and others, formed a conjunction 
of the two characters, although perhaps in Jeffrey 
alone were they thoroughly harmonized. Scott 
was both a litterateur and a lawyer, but far more 
a litterateur ; Cranstoun and Cockburn were more 
of the lawyer ; while Jeffrey united both in nearly 
equal proportions, being at once sharp as the 
sharpest special pleader, and as acute and lively, if 
not as genial or profound, a critic as Britain ever 
produced. Along with William Clerk of Eldin, 
Abercromby, and Cranstoun, Scott spent his morn- 
ings in the Law Class-room or in private study, 
his evenings in the somewhat excessive conviviali- 
ties of that time, and his holidays in rambles about 
the surrounding country. Sometimes they strolled 
too far for the contents of their purses, and had to 
subsist on cold water and hips and haws in their 
return. Such adventures are the romance and 
magic of the early life of literary men and students. 
We knew a youth, now a voluminous author, who 
left Glasgow for Stirling with precisely one penny 
in his pocket, which he spent at Denny on a roll ; 
and this with water from a running brook formed 
his only refreshment for the twenty-eight- miles of 



WALTER SCOTT. 



road. Scott's father was rather annoyed at these 
escapades, although he was so glad to see him 
when he returned, that, like Kish with Saul, he 
forgot the meditated rebuke. Scott's nickname 
among his own set was Duns Scotus, or sometimes 
by an alias of his own creation, Colonel Grogg. 
His dress at this time was neglected : corduroy 
breeches were his common attire ; and when re- 
proached with their meanness, his reply was, 
4 They be good enough for drinking in : come, and 
let us have some oysters in the Covenant Close.' 
These convivialities, however, were afterwards re- 
linquished. In his maturer years he was a strictly 
temperate man ; and from grosser dissipation he 
was kept almost entirely free, through means of a 
pure and passionate attachment, of which we shall 
speak in the sequel. 

In 1792 (nth July) Scott was called to the bar. 
He had joined previously the Speculative Society, 
where Jeffrey first saw him, his chafts (Scottice) 
wrapt up in a large woollen nightcap, the poet 
being ill of toothache, and yet able to read a paper 
on old ballads, which so interested Jeffrey, that he 
got introduced to him, and they became great allies. 
Like most young advocates, Scott had little busi- 
ness at first ; but he drank claret at Fortune's, and 
ate oysters in St. John's Coffeehouse, dear to him 



AT COLLEGE. 31 



as erst the haunt of Dr. Pitcairn ; read now Stair's 
Decisions, and now the last new novel ; and every 
day might be seen sweeping with his gown the 
boards of that Parliament House which seems the 
Hall of Eblis to many a weary and briefless peri- 
patetic. 

In the autumn of this year he was introduced to 
Mr. Robert Shortreed, the respected Sheriff-substi- 
tute of Roxburghshire, and this led to a most im- 
portant section of Scott's life. He had felt a strong 
desire, which was now gratified, to visit Liddes- 
dale, and collect the ballads and traditions which 
were floating there, especially those riding ballads 
which he believed to be still preserved among the 
descendants of the mosstroopers. For seven suc- 
cessive years the twain persevered in making 
autumnal excursions to that romantic region. Lid- 
desdale was then not much better known than the 
interior of Africa is now. 

' It lay like some unkenned of isle 
Ayont New Holland.' 

But Scott and Shortreed were richly rewarded 
for their daring exploration. They saw fine 
mountain scenes, drank in pure air, collected songs 
and traditions, told stories, galloped long miles, 
climbed hills, pursued foxes, speared salmon, lay in 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Charlieshopes without number, kissed fraternally 
the farmers' wives, fondled the children, floored if 
possible at their own weapons of strong waters the 
goodmen ; acted, in short, exactly as Captain Brown 
did when residing with Dandie Dinmont, or as an 
electioneering candidate is in the habit of doing, 
but with a very different motive from the member ; 
the one purchasing selfish popularity, and the other 
laying in the materials of universal fame by con- 
descension and kindness. The story, ' There's the 
keg at last,' is too familiar to require to be re- 
counted. ' He was making hitnseV a' the time,' says 
honest Shortreed, ' but he didna ken what he was 
about till years had passed. At first he thought 
o' little, I daresay, but the queerness and the fun.' 

From these visits came in due time the Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border. It has been said, absurdly 
we think, that Scott had no pleasure while writing 
his poems and novels. He had none, indeed, of 
that half-inebriated ecstasy with which Burns wrote 
his Tarn d Shanter, nor of that lingering, long 
drawn out, concentrated pleasure with which 
Wordsworth brooded over his thoughts while form- 
ing them into verse, saying, as it were, to each, ' I 
will not let thee go except thou bless me.' Yet 
surely, if he had neither the joy of inspiration nor 
of incubation, he had a large measure of delight 



AT COLLEGE. 33 



while, amid the freshness of morning nature, with 
the sound of the Tweed in his ears, or the sun 
smiting the Castle rock before his eyes, he indited 
pages which he knew were as immortal and as 
pure as those waters or that sun-fire. But at all 
events he had enjoyment, the most exquisite and 
varied, while collecting their materials amongst the 
mosses or by the firesides of the Border : he was 
then luxuriating as well as ' making himself/ and 
probably looked back long afterwards to this as to 
the happiest period of his existence. 



c Uf 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLY LOVE, LITERATURE, MARRIAGE, AND 
POETRY. 




ETTERCAIRN is a small estate in Kin- 
cardineshire, situated near the pleasant 
village of that name, on a rich level and 
stream-bisected spot, not far from the foot of the 
Grampians, which here somewhat stoop their mighty 
stature, and appear as it were kneeling before the 
German Ocean. Fettercairn is not only beautiful 
in itself, but surrounded on all sides by interesting 
scenes. The spot where Queen Finella's castle (a 
vitrified fort where Kenneth III. was murdered) is 
said to have stood is near it. The Burn, with all 
its marvellous woodland and water-side beauties, 
stands a few miles to the west ; and near it is the 
lovely Arnhall, with its fine old park, garden, and 
legendary memories. Fasque, the seat of the Glad- 
stone family, is behind to the north, and in the 

same direction a steep hill-road conducts over the 
24 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 35 

Cairnamount to Banchory and Balmoral. The 
Castles of Edzell and Balbegno frown emulously 
westward ; and a good way to the east, the proud 
ruin of Dunnottar Castle, with its huge structure 
and historical associations, links the mountains to 
the sea. Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn had a 
daughter named Williamina, who resided part of 
the year in Edinburgh. Sir Walter met this lady, 
it is said, in Greyfriars Churchyard after service, 
and during a shower of rain. The offer of an 
umbrella, which was graciously accepted, formed 
the commencement of an acquaintance, and the 
earnest of the offer of an heart ; not, alas ! so well 
received by the fair one. She is described as 
beautiful, a blue-eyed blonde, of very gentle 
manners and considerable literary accomplish- 
ments. Her mother had been an early companion 
of Scott's mother. His love was exceedingly 
ardent, and a recollection of her image colours his 
pictures of female heroines, particularly in the Lay 
of the Last Minstrel, Rokeby, and Redgauntiet. 
But not more hopeless was Dairsie Latimer's pas- 
sion for Lilias Redgauntiet (his disguised sister) 
than Scott's for the fair Williamina. The different 
rank of the parties was an obstacle ; and, besides, 
although she admired his genius, and corresponded 
with him on literary matters, her heart was given 



36 WALTER SCOTT. 

to another. In vain did he write original and 
translate German verses to please her, and carve 
out her name in Runic characters amidst the ruins 
of St. Andrews. In vain was he often attracted 
northwards by the spell of love, visiting Simprim, 
Dunnottar, Meigle, and Glamis ; at Dunnottar 
falling in by the way with ' Old Mortality/ and 
spending in Glamis an eerie night, under the 
hallucination that it was the castle where King 
Duncan was murdered by Macbeth. She con- 
tinued inexorable, and at last, in October 1796, he 
received a point-blank refusal from her own lips at 
her own Grampian home. We see him mounting 
his horse, and bearing southwards through the 
bleak moors toward Montrose, perhaps in a wild, 
blustering autumn night, and with a face under the 
gruff, grim calmness of which one could have read 
strange matters, and caught glimpses of a wounded 
and well-nigh broken heart. Thence, in a kind of 
frenzy, he ' recoiled into the wilderness/ and reached 
first Perth, and then Edinburgh, by a circuitous 
and savage route, through ' moors and mosses 
mony O ;' dashing his steed, like his own Mowbray 
in St. Ronans Well, over scaurs, and through 
forests and marshes, where in those days none but 
a desperate spirit could have preserved his life ; 
but in the course of his journey digesting his 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 37 

misery, and returning home a sadder and a wiser 
man. His friends, especially Miss Cranstoun, after- 
wards the Countess of Purgstall in Styria, a gifted 
female, who had taken a deep interest in this love 
affair, and who knew Scott's impetuous disposition, 
had expected some fearful explosion, and were glad 
to see him sitting down calmly to his books again. 
He says himself, however, that he was broken- 
hearted for two years, — a time we must surely 
restrict a little, since his disappointment happened 
in October 1796, and his marriage to Miss Car- 
penter took place in December the next year. 
Miss Stuart in 1797 married Sir. W. Forbes, son of 
the biographer of Beattie, who was afterwards of 
essential service to Scott in his misfortunes. The 
iron must have entered into his soul, although he 
contrived at first to conceal the wound ; since we 
find him not only often alluding to his loss, but 
in his latter days visiting the lady's mother, and 
spending a whole night of the joy of grief in talk- 
ing over old stories, and mingling their tears, Lady 
Forbes being then dead. She was the first, and 
perhaps the last, person whom Scott, affectionate 
husband though he was, ever loved with his whole 
being. He passed afterwards Kincardineshire by 
sea, but we never hear of him visiting that part of 
Scotland again. One of the few points of resem- 



3S WALTER SCOTT. 

blance (unless their infirmity of lameness) between 
Scott and Byron lies in the early love disappoint- 
ment which befell them both. But while Scott's 
wound, though felt deeply and felt long, entirely 
failed to poison his peace or to weaken his faith, 
it was different with Byron. The image of Miss 
Chaworth haunted him all his life afterwards — like 
a spectre, stood between him and his bride — be- 
tween him and 

' Ada, sole daughter of his house and heart ' — 

between him, shall we say, and his happiness, his 
heaven, and his God ; and whenever he was at a 
loss for a ground of quarrel with himself, with Pro- 
vidence, or with society, with the present, the past, 
or the future, he came back to her, and her memory 
became a sore that everlastingly ran — an amari 
aliquid which always retained its taste of bitterness 
and its hue of gloom. The resemblance between 
Scott and Byron in this matter was simply acci- 
dental ; but the difference of the way in which each 
managed his misery, measured all the distance 
between one of the most morbid and one of the 
healthiest and strongest of the children of men. 

Scott had for some time previous been medi- 
tating an incursion into the realms of authorship. 
He had written in a single sleepless night a trans- 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 39 

lation of Burger's famous ballad of Leonore, which 
gained him much applause in his own coterie, and 
which, if not perhaps quite equal to that of Wil- 
liam Taylor of Norwich, is a piece of vigorous and 
dashing verse. He had also translated The Wild 
Huntsman, another ballad by the same poet. On 
his return, from the north in that spirit of hardiesse 
and bravado which often follows disappointment, 
and reveals the ferment of its remaining dregs, he 
1 rushed into print ' with those two ballads. This 
brochure, printed by Manners & Miller, was well 
received in Edinburgh, and warmly commended 
by honest William Taylor himself, but gained no 
general acceptance in the south ; and let it be 
consoling to incipient authors to know, that the 
first production of the most popular of writers was 
a complete failure and a dead loss. 

In July 1797, Scott, disappointed at the failure 
of his first poem, wearied with another campaign at 
the bar, where his gains were as yet very moderate, 
and with a little of his love-sickness still unmelted 
about his heart, turned his thoughts toward his 
favourite south of Scotland again. On. this occa- 
sion, however, he extended his visit to England ; 
and after a scamper through Peeblesshire, where 
he had his first and only interview with David 
Ritchie, the original of the Black Dwarf, in his 



40 WALTER SCOTT. 

residence up Manor Water — a dreary spot, moss 
and mountains clustering all round the mud 
cottage where the misanthrope dwelt — and a 
rapid run through Carlisle, Penrith, Ulleswater, 
and Windermere, he reached the then sequestered 
little watering-place of Gilsland. His companions 
in this tour were his brother John, and Adam 
Fergusson. Scott had nearly fallen in love with 
a young lady residing at the Spa, when his real 
matrimonial Fate crossed his path. Riding one 
day near Gilsland, they met a lady on horseback 
whose appearance struck them so much, that they 
followed her, and found her to belong to the party 
at the Well, although they had not previously 
observed her. They became speedily acquainted. 
Her name was Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. 
She was, the daughter of a French emigrant whose 
widow had fled from the horrors of the Revolution 
to England, where she and her children found an 
efficient protector and guardian in the Marquis of 
Downshire, who had previously known the family 
abroad. 1 The daughter and her governess were 

1 Since writing the above, we have been favoured with 
some additional particulars of this event, which we believe are 
authentic. The Marquis of Downshire, going on his travels, 
had a note of introduction from Mr. Bird, Dean of Carlisle, 
to Monsieur Carpenter of Paris. The unhappy result of the 
acquaintance was the elopement of Madame Carpenter, a 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 41 

on a little excursion to some friends in the north 
of England, and had come for a few days to 
Gilsland. She was, as often happens with second 
loves as well as with second marriages, of exactly 
the opposite complexion, and perhaps also of dis- 
position, to Scott's former flame, — having dark 
hair, deep brown eyes, and an olive complexion, 
very beautiful withal, and with an ' address hover- 
ing between the reserve of a pretty young English- 
woman who has not mingled widely with general 

very beautiful woman, with his lordship. The husband did 
nothing in the matter except transmitting his two children, 
a boy and girl, to the care of his wife, and they lived for 
some years under her and Lord Downshire's protection. On 
her death he placed the girl in a French convent for her 
education, and sent out the boy to a lucrative situation in 
India, with the stipulation that ^200 of his salary should go 
yearly to his sister. Miss Carpenter returned to London, 
and was placed under the charge of Miss Nicholson, a 
governess. The young lady formed an attachment to a 
young man, whose addresses were not agreeable to his lord- 
ship. He sent her and her governess down to Mr. Bird's at 
Carlisle, to keep her out of her lover's way. Mr. Bird had 
fixed previously to go to Gilsland, and he took Miss Car- 
penter and Miss Nicholson along with his family thither. 
They were placed, as usual with new-comers, at the foot of 
the table at the Spa ; and it so happened that a young Scotch 
gentleman, who had arrived later that day, was placed lower 
still, and thus brought into immediate contact with the Bird 
party. Mrs. Bird inquired at him if he knew a Scotch 
military man of her acquaintance, Major Riddell. Scott (for 
it was he) knew him well: This formed instantly a link of 



42 WALTER SCOTT. 

society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety 
that suited well with the accompaniment of a 
French accent.' She was a Protestant by faith. 
The courtship went off successfully. She had 
come, it is not uncharitable to suppose, to Gils- 
land like other specimens of the female ' Ccelebs 
in search of a husband ;' and here was an ardent 
youth, of great conversational powers and prepos- 
sessing appearance : a l comely creature,' accord- 
ing to the testimony of a lady of the time. He, 

connection, and the Birds invited him to tea with them in 
their own apartment ; and although his horse was ordered to 
the door to convey him on his journey, he at once consented. 
He had been struck at first sight with Miss Carpenter's 
appearance, and resolved to prosecute the acquaintance. 
He remained at the Spa, and was continually in her com- 
pany. He even contrived to get himself invited to the 
Dean's country house ere he was compelled to return to 
Edinburgh. In a short time he reappeared in Mr. Bird's 
house, and enjoyed another fortnight of Miss Carpenter's 
society. His attentions became very marked, and Mrs. 
Bird at last wrote off to a friend in Edinburgh to make 
inquiries about this stranger. The answer was that he was 
a respectable young man, and rising at the bar. One of 
Scott's female acquaintances, however, perhaps chagrined at 
Scott's indifference to her, and having heard of some love 
adventure going on at Gilsland, wrote to Mrs. Bird inquiring 
about it, and wondering 'what kind of young lady it was 
who was to take Watty Scott.' The poet soon after found 
means to conciliate Lord Downshire to his views, and the 
marriage took place as related in the text. James Hogg 
insinuates that the Marquis was Charlotte Carpenter's father. 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 43 

on the other hand, was precisely in that degree of 
moderated love misery, and softened despair, his 
heart a taper half-quenched, when a new object is 
likely to surprise the man into a delight, in the 
possibility of which he had almost forgotten to 
believe. As an expatriated French loyalist, too, 
there was something in her story to suit Scott's 
political feelings, as well as to captivate his 
romantic imagination. Then they met at a water- 
ing-place — a ' St. Ronan's Well ' — where conven- 
tional barriers were broken down, and where 
sudden and singular matches were the order of the 
day. He fell, accordingly, or seemed to himself to 
fall, into a violent love passion, which was returned 
by the lady. Recalled from his romantic court- 
ship to the Jedburgh Assizes, he astonished his 
friend Shortreed by the ardour of his new affection. 
The two worthy young lawyers sate till one in the 
morning on the 30th September ; Scott toasting 
and raving about Miss Carpenter, and Shortreed 
not daring to rebuke the madness of the poet. 
After some little obstructions thrown in the way by 
the parents and guardians had been surmounted, 
and some agreeable nonsense had been talked 
and written on both sides by the parties them- 
selves, Walter Scott and the beautiful Charlotte 
Carpenter were wedded at Carlisle on the 24th of 



44 WALTER SCOTT. 

December 1797, about four months after they first 
met. She had, it may be mentioned, about ^400 
a year in her own right. 

She went with him to Edinburgh, where, not- 
withstanding some foreign peculiarities of manners 
and tastes, she began her matrimonial career with 
considerable eclat. When summer arrived, Scott 
hired a beautiful cottage at Lasswade, on the 
banks of the Esk, — a river sweeping down through 
the richest woodlands and scenery of varied en- 
chantment from Hawthornden, and thus uniting in 
a band of beauty the abodes of Drummond and 
Scott, two of Scotland's best and most patriotic 
children. It is pleasant to think of each period 
of Scott's literary history as linked with some spot 
of special natural loveliness. At Lasswade he 
commenced his real literary career, at Ashestiel 
his poetic genius culminated, and with Abbots- 
ford is connected the memory of his matchless 
fictions. Ever to such nests of nature may the 
winged fledgelings of genius be traced. Words- 
worth wrote best at Rydal Mount, Burns in Ellis- 
land, and Byron among the giant pines of the 
forest of Ravenna. 

The literary world has had at various periods 
the strangest autocrats, varying from King Stork 
to King Log, from men of the most exalted genius 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 45 

to clever mediocrists, from a Dryden and a Pope 
to a Pye and a Hayley ; but we doubt if ever it 
had such a scarecrow sovereign as Monk Lewis. 
He was a man, no doubt, of considerable genius, 
and of real warmth of heart, but vain, coxcombical, 
and what is technically called 'gay' in his habits. 
His novel The Monk has some convulsive power, 
but is marred by a prurient licence which appalls 
and disgusts modern readers. In poetry he is a 
good imitator of the worst style of a very inge- 
nious but fantastic school of Germans. To many 
even then it was a matter of astonishment how a 
ludicrously little and over-dressed mannikin (the 
fac-simile of Lovel in Evelina), 'with eyes project- 
ing like those of some insects, and flattish in the 
orbits/ should be the lion of London literary 
society, and how the Prince of Dandies should 
have a taste for the weird and wonderful, and be 
the first to transfer to English the spirit of some 
of the early German bards. On Scott, such tales 
as Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine, extra- 
vagant and absurd as he deemed them afterwards, 
exerted much influence. William Erskine had met 
the Monk in London, and had shown him Scott's 
version of Burger's ballads. This led to a corre- 
spondence ; and Lewis, shortly after visiting Edin- 
burgh, invited Scott to his hotel, — an invitation 



46 WALTER SCOTT. 

which * elated ' our hero more than anything that 
had ever befallen him. The two became speedily 
intimate, although the intimacy now seems as dis- 
proportionate as were that of a monkey with a 
mammoth ; and in January 1799 Lewis negotiated 
the publication of Scott's version of Goethe's Goete 
von Bcrlichingen.- One Bell bought it for twenty- 
five guineas ; and it appeared in February, but, 
like his Leonora, failed to make much impression. 
It swarms with verbal blunders, yet must ever 
be interesting, not only as one of Scott's earliest 
productions, but because it exhibits two of the 
mightiest, and certainly the two most popular 
writers of their period, in contact as mirrored and 
mirroring. The world has not yet fully made up 
its mind about Goethe. Admitting generally his 
extraordinary powers, the greatness of his acquire- 
ments, and the potent grasp with which he held 
them — as Jupiter a sheaf of thunderbolts — his pro- 
found practical sagacity, and the splendour of three 
or four of his poems, and of part of his novels, 
it doubts of his taste, more than doubts of his 
morale, and deplores the coldness of his tem- 
perament. But it has no doubt of the powerful 
influence he exerted on contemporary men of 
genius, and others besides. To Faust we owe 
Manfred, The Deformed Transformed, and Festiis; 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 47 

and to his Goctz of the Iron Hand we trace much 
of the chivalric spirit which breathes in Scott's 
poetry and prose. Indeed, one of the scenes in 
Goethe's poem has evidently suggested to Scott 
the death-scene in Marmion, and the beautiful 
picture of the storm, as seen from the turret by 
Rebecca, and described to Ivanhoe. Nothing else, 
before or afterwards written by Goethe, would have 
attracted Scott so much as Goetz. He, we venture 
to say, utterly loathed Werther, allowed some 
passages in Wilhelm Meister, but characterized 
the whole as fantastic and immoral ; and saw in 
Faust, while ardently admiring, a production cer- 
tainly above his powers to render into English, 
but which perhaps might have been as well left 
unwritten, even in German, the profanity and in- 
completeness serving to neutralize the daring of 
the thought and the marvellous luxuriance of the 
fancy. A few of Goethe's minor poems and ballads, 
and that almost Solomonic wealth of wisdom which 
is scattered in so many nooks and interstices of his 
writings, he admired, without envying or approving 
of the personal experience through which much of 
that wisdom was acquired. 

In 1799, after the publication of Goetz, Scott 
took his wife with him to London, where he had 
not been since infancy, and was introduced by 



43 WALTER SCOTT. 

Lewis to many literary and fashionable people. 
This, however, he enjoyed less than a visit to 
the Tower, Westminster Abbey, and the British 
Museum, where he at length was able to feed 
full his antiquarian enthusiasm. While he was in 
London, his worthy father — who, though not quite 
seventy, was entirely worn out by a series of pro- 
tracted sufferings — died, and Thomas succeeded to 
the business. The property left was not great ; but, 
besides enabling the widow to live in comfort for 
the remainder of her life, it formed a considerable 
addition to the fortunes of the rest of the family. 
His mother and sister came and spent the summer 
and autumn with him in Lasswade. About this 
time Scott wrote another Germanized drama, The 
House of Aspen, which was forwarded to London 
to be acted, but it did not please on rehearsal. 
The author printed it thirty years afterwards in 
one of the Annuals. He spent a good deal of 
time, too, in contributing revised versions of 
Leonora and The Wild Huntsman, and some other 
pieces, to the ' hobgoblin repast ' which Lewis was 
preparing in his Tales of Wonder. 

It is worth noticing how Scott, with a native 
tendency to superstition, and who in his early pro- 
ductions dealt so much with the supernatural, has 
so little of it in his maturer writings ; how he kept 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 49 

his organ of wonder, which must have been enor- 
mous, in such severe and long-continued suppres- 
sion. On the other hand, his bits of diablerie, 
when they do occur, such as the apparition to 
Fergus Maclvor in Waver ley, the story of Martin 
Walbeck in The Antiquary, and Wandering Willie's 
Tale in Redgauntlet, are transcendent, and pro- 
bably seem better from their rarity. The Wizard's 
power of calling spirits from the vasty deep seems 
to have been so absolute and so easy that he dis- 
dained to exercise it, and turned him to tasks from 
which, being more difficult, greater glory was to be 
gathered. In his premature dotage, however, we 
find him, in My Aunt Margaret's Mirror and 
other pieces, snatching eagerly at marvellous ma- 
terials, which in the day of his power he would 
have sternly waived aside. This summer (1799) 
he wrote his ballads of Glenfinlas, The Eve of St. 
John, The Fire-king, and others of similar merit ; 
and toward the close of the year, James Ballan- 
tyne having now established his inimitable press in 
Kelso, he printed with him a dozen copies of some 
of these pieces, under the title of Apology for Tales 
of Wonder, Mat Lewis' collection having been long 
of appearing. The specimen of the printing pleased 
Scott, and led him to project an issue from the 
same press of the Border ballads which he had col- 



50 WALTER SCOTT. 

lected ; in other words, to form the idea of the 
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the publication 
of which became an era in the history of James 
Ballantyne, of Scott, of Scottish poetry, and of 
modern literature in general. In December this 
year, through the influence of the Earl of Dalkeith, 
of Lord Montagu, and of the Dundases — Harry 
Dundas being then the real king of Scotland — our 
poet was appointed Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire, 
with £300 a year, little to do, and a still freer and 
fuller access than before to the regions of Border 
beauty and Border song, so peculiarly dear to his 
imagination. In completing the design of the Min- 
strelsy, Scott found able coadjutors : the accom- 
plished and learned Richard Heber ; Dr. Jamieson, 
the author of the Scottish Dictionary, himself a 
mine of antique lore even richer than his book ; 
and the famous John Leyden. Of this man Scott 
had a very high opinion. He says, in The Lord 
of the Isles, 

' A distant and a deadly shore 
Holds Leyden's cold remains.' 

And in St. Ronarts Well he introduces Joseph 
Cargill, when Leyden's name was mentioned, say- 
ing, 'I knew him ; a lamp too early quenched.' He 
was certainly the most determined of students, and 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 51 



most eccentric of men, a Behemoth of capacity 
and strong purpose, who took in a language ' like 
Jordan' into his mouth ; who could master a whole 
art like medicine in six months ; who once walked 
forty miles and back again to procure a missing 
ballad, and entered a company singing it with 
enthusiastic gestures, and in the ' saw-tones ' of a 
most energetic voice ; whose Border blood asserted 
itself even amidst the languid atmosphere of India, 
and on the sick-bed, whence he shouted out the old 
chorus, 

' Wha daur meddle wi' me ? ' 

and in whom a certain dash of charlatanerie, and 
perhaps more than a dash of derangement, only 
served as foils to the vigour of his mind, the solidity 
of his learning, the freshness of his literary enthu- 
siasm, and the fervour of his poetic genius : for 
although not a great poet, a poet he was. We 
shall not soon forget visiting the little room in a 
poor cottage in the village of Denholm where this 
prodigy of learning, diligence, and energy was 
born — in the centre of those beautiful regions he 
was afterwards to describe in his Scenes of Infancy. 
Leyden and Thomas Campbell, both in Edin- 
burgh at this time, never could agree. Camp- 
bell thought Leyden boastful and self-asserting ; 



52 WALTER SCOTT. 

Leyden thought Campbell jealous and envious. 
We believe there was a modicum of truth in their 
estimates of each other. Campbell had been un- 
fortunate and not over well conducted in his youth ; 
had been waylaid on his path to the pulpit by an 
unlucky circumstance ; and this, along with poverty, 
had soured him: and it is in the sour system that the 
malignant acid of envy is precipitated. Nor could 
all his after brilliant career entirely sweeten his spirit. 
Yet he was a fine-hearted man in the main, as well 
as a thoroughly true one. ' There was nothing false 
about him but his hair, which was a wig, and his 
Avhiskers, which were dyed.' Leyden had some- 
thing of the self-glorification of a wild Indian chief, 
fond of showing his strings of scalps, and chanting 
fierce war-songs over his fallen foes ; but he, too, 
was sincere, warm-hearted, and guileless. When 
he read Campbell's Hohenlinden, he said to Scott, 
'Dash it ! I hate the fellow, but he has written 
the best verses I have read for ever so long ; ' to 
which Campbell replied, ' I detest Leyden with all 
my soul, but I know the value of his critical appro- 
bation.' Scott loved and was on friendly terms 
with both of them, and bore with their faults the 
more, as he had no envy, jealousy, or self-conceit 
in his own system. 

In 1800 and 1801 he was busy with the Min- 



EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 53 

strclsy, with the duties — not very burdensome — of 
his Sheriffship, and with the bar, where he was 
slowly increasing his business. In some of his pro- 
fessional visits to Selkirkshire he became acquainted 
with William Laidlaw and James Hogg, both re- 
markable men. William Laidlaw possessed the 
canine fidelity and fondness of Boswell, without the 
meaner qualities, and with a sense, simplicity, and 
poetic feeling which were denied to Jamie. His 
Lticys Flitting is an exquisitely true and pathetic 
strain. James Hogg had a wild touch of the truest 
genius, and an Alpine elevation and enthusiasm 
of mind strangely co-existing with coarse tastes, 
manners, and habits ; was one whom poetry had in- 
spired without refining, and who had conceit, envy, 
and spite enough to set up all Grub Street, blended 
with a simplicity and rough kindness which partly 
redeemed his failings, and partly served to render 
the whole compound more intensely ridiculous. 
Genius, like misery, has often dwelt with strange 
bedfellows, but seldom with so many at once, and 
seldom in such a monstrous mesalliance, as in the 
idiosyncrasy and life of James Hogg. Yet, like 
the bag of honey in the rough bee, there was in 
him a singularly sweet vein of poetry, of which 
Kilmeny was an outcome. His works, which are 
very voluminous, show extraordinary versatility of 



54 WALTER SCOTT. 

powers ; and altogether, we may say of him, as 
Lockhart is compelled to do, that he was the most 
remarkable man that ever wore the maud of a 
Scottish shepherd. 

Both these men adored Scott, both were pressed 
by him into the service of the Minstrelsy, and both 
materially aided him in his researches. At length, 
in January 1802, the first two volumes of the work 
appeared ; and although they did not command 
a rapid sale, they made a great impression on the 
lovers of poetry. George Ellis, well known in those 
days for his collection of ancient English romances, 
and specimens of ancient English poetry, wrote of 
the book in terms of rapture, and was followed in a 
similar strain by Pinkerton, Chalmers, Ritson, and 
Miss Seward. Encouraged by their approbation, 
Scott began to prepare a third volume, and sent 
the old poetic romance of Sir Tristram, which he 
had found too long for the Minstrelsy, to the Border 
press, as it was now called, for separate publica- 
tion. It did not, however, appear till after the 
third volume of the Minstrelsy, which was pub- 
lished in 1803, and contained an advertisement of 
Sir Tristram, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
as speedily to be published. Ballantyne had now, 
at Scott's suggestion, removed to Edinburgh, and 
taken a printing-office near Holyrood. 



'm%m$?m 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE BORDER MINSTRELSY, AND THE LAY OF 
THE LAST MINSTREL. 




HERE can be no doubt that the Scottish 
Minstrelsy exerted on poetry in general 
a most healthful influence. The book 
seemed a fresh well, a 'diamond of the desert' newly 
opened amid the dry sandy wastes and the brackish 
streams of a literary wilderness. Wordsworth's 
Lyrical Ballads had appeared a few years previously, 
but had hitherto made very little impression on the 
public mind. Lewis' Tales of Terror, and transla- 
tions from the German, had been over-stimulating, 
and were beginning to pall. It was not surprising 
that, in such a dreary dearth, a few bunches of wild 
flowers, culled as it were from the walls of a ruined 
castle, but with the scent of free winds, and the 
freshness of the dew, and the tints of the sun upon 

the leaves, shot suddenly into the hands of men, 

55 



56 WALTER SCOTT. 

should attract notice and awaken delight ; that, 
while rejected by some of the fastidious, and the 
idolaters of Pope and Dryden, they should refresh 
the dispirited lovers of poetry ; and that, while the 
vain and the worldly passed them by, if they did 
not tear and trample them under foot with fierce 
shouts of laughter, the simple-hearted on both sides 
of the Border took them up and folded them to 
their bosoms. Had the Minstrelsy appeared as an 
original work, we doubt if it would have met with 
such success. But, issued under the prestige of 
antiquity, criticism was disarmed : the prejudice 
men feel in favour of the old was enlisted in behalf 
of the new, and the book assumed the interest at 
once of a birth and a resurrection. 

One main merit of these ballads lay in their rela- 
tion to the period when they were sung, and in their 
thorough reflection of the manners, feelings, super- 
stitions, and passions of a rude age. This, joined 
to the literary excellence possessed by most of its 
specimens, renders the old ballad by far the most 
interesting species of poetry. The interest springs 
from the primitive form of society described in it, — 
a society composed of a few simple elements, of the 
baron's ha', the peasant's cot ; the feudal castle, the 
little dependent hamlet beside it ; the sudden raids 
made by one hostile chief upon another ; the wild 






THE BORDER MINSTRELSY. 57 

games, gatherings, and huntings which relieved ever 
and anon the monotony of life ; the few travellers, 
chiefly pilgrims or soldiers, moving through the 
solitudes of the landscape ; the Monastery with its 
cowled tenants, and the Minster with its command- 
ing tower : from the glimpses given of an early 
and uncultivated nature ; of dreary moors, with 
jackmen spurring their horses across to seize a 
prey ; of little patches of culture shining like spots 
of arrested sunshine on the desolate hills ; of evening 
glens, down which are descending to their repose 
long and lowing trains of cattle from the upland 
pastures ; and of ancient forests of birch, or oak, or 
pine, blackening along the ridges, half-choking the 
cry of the cataracts, and furnishing a shelter for the 
marauders of the time, if not also for the disem- 
bodied dead, or evil spirits from the pit : from the 
superstitions of that dark age, — ghosts standing 
sheeted in blood by the bedside of their murderers ; 
fairies footing it to the light of the moon, and the 
music of the midnight wind ; witches dwelling in 
caves communicating with hell ; and portents of the 
sky — the new moon in the old ones arms, double suns, 
and tearless rainbows : and from the view supplied 
of fierce and stormy passions, boiling in hot abori- 
ginal hearts, ever prompting to deeds of violence, 
yet mingled with thrills of generous emotion, and 



5 3 WALTER SCOTT. 

touches of chivalric grace. Then there was the build 
of the ballad, so simple yet striking, full even in its 
fragmcntariness, bringing out all main events and 
master-strokes with complete success, often break- 
ing off with an unconscious art at the very point 
where it was certain to produce the greatest effect ; 
its very splinters, like those of aromatic wood, 
smelling sweetest at the fracture ; its lyrical spirit, 
so changeful, gushing, bird-like ; and its language, so 
native, simple, graphic, yet in its simplicity power- 
ful, and capable of the grandest occasional effects ; 
reminding you of an oak sapling, which in the 
hands of a strong yeoman has often turned aside 
the keen point of the rapier, dashed the claymore 
to the dust, and deadened the blow of the mighty 
descending mace. Not inferior, besides, to any of 
these elements of interest, is the figure projected 
on our vision of the Minstrel himself, wandering 
through the country like a breeze or a river at his 
own sweet will, with a harp, which is his passion, 
pride, and passport, in his hand ; now pausing on 
the rustic bridge, and watching the progress of the 
haunted stream, which had once ran red with gore 
in some ancient skirmish ; now seated on the 
mountain summit, and seeing in the castles, abbeys, 
and towers which dot the landscape on every side, 
as well as in the cottages, villages, braes, and woods, 



THE BORDER MINSTRELSY. 59 

a subject for his muse ; and now beheld in a tower 
or castle, which even then had been for centuries a 
ruin, silent in its age, like that solemn Kilchurn 
Castle, standing at the base of Cruachan like a 
hoary penitent before God, but soothed amidst re- 
morse and anguish by the sympathetic murmur of 
the dark Orchay and the silver ripple of the blue 
Loch Awe, — meditating over other times, and 
passing his hand across his lyre at intervals, with a 
touch as casual and careless, yet music-stirring as 
that of the breeze upon the nettles and the ivy 
which in part adorn and in part insult the sur- 
rounding desolation, — or to view, in another aspect 
still, the manifolded Minstrel, his figure seen now 
entering a cottage at eventide, and drawing the 
simple circle as if in a net around him, as he 
sings 

1 Of old, unhappy, far-off things, 
And battles long ago/ 

or as he touches the trembling chords of their 
superstition by some weird tale of diablerie ; now 
admitted, like Scott's famous hero, into the lordly 
hall, and there surrounded by bright-eyed maidens, 
and stimulated by the twofold flatteries of sugared 
lips and generous wines, pouring out his high- 
wrought, enthusiastic, yet measured and well- 
modulated strains ; now meeting some brother 



60 WALTER SCOTT. 

bard, and exchanging by the lonely mountain 
wayside or in some rude hostelry their experience 
and their songs ; now firing warriors on the morn 
of battle by some Tyrtsean ode ; now soothing the 
soul of the departing soldier, as did Allan Bane 
Roderick Dhu, by some martial strain which seems 
to the dying ear the last echo of the last of a 
hundred fights ; now singing his dirge after his 
death ; and now, in fine, himself expiring, with the 
whole fire of the minstrel spirit mounting to his 
eye, and with the harp and the cross meeting over 
his dying pillow, as emblems of his joy on earth 
and of his hope in heaven. In addition to these 
ideas, images, and associations, let us remember 
the fact that ballads have been, as Fletcher said 
long ago, the real laws of a country ; that they 
have pervaded every rank of society ; mingled like 
currents of air with men's loves, hatreds, enthu- 
siasms, patriotic passions ; passed from the lips of 
the Minstrel himself to those of the ploughman in 
the field, the maid by the well (singing, perchance, 
as in that exquisite scene in Guy Manner ing : 

1 Are these the links of Forth, she said, 
Or are they the crooks of Dee, 
Or the bonnie woods of Warroch-head, 
That I sae fain wad see ? '), 

the reaper among the sheaves, the herdsman in the 



LA Y OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 61 

noontide solitude of the hill or in the snow-buried 
shieling, the babe in the nursery, or the little maid 
in her solitude — how strange and holy ! — with God 
for her only companion, while wandering to school 
through woods and wildernesses ; and the soldier 
resting after the fatigues of a day of blood, or 
returning to his mountain home when the wars 
are over, to the music of one of its own unforgotten 
songs. Who remembers not the ploughman in Don 
Quixote, who, as he goes forth to his morning labour, 
is singing the ancient ballad of ' Ronces Valles ? ' 
And add still further, as an illustration of the 
power and charm of ballad poetry, that Homer, 
the earliest and all but the greatest of poets, was 
a ballad-maker ; that Shakspeare condescended 
to borrow stanzas, and plots, and hints from old 
English ballads ; and that many of our best 
modern poetic productions — Coleridge's Christabel 
and Rime of the Anciente Marinere, Wordsworth's 
Lyrical Ballads, Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley, 
Allan Cunningham's best lyrics, Macaulay's Lays 
of Ancient Rome, some of Tennyson's well-known 
verses, and innumerable more — are imitations in 
style, or in spirit, or in manner, or in all three, of 
those wild, early, spontaneous, immortal strains. 

Specially did the Lay of the Last Minstrel and 
its successors spring naturally from the Minstrelsy 



62 WALTER SCOTT. 

of the Scottish Border. In this last Scott had been 
collecting the materials on which his genius was to 
feed, ' like fire to heather set.' He had been edu- 
cating, too, the public taste to the pitch when such 
a poem as the Lay would likely be well received. 
No doubt he ran a certain risk by putting his own 
writings in competition with those exquisite old 
ballads. But he knew he was of kindred genius 
with their authors, and he hoped that by grafting 
the interest of a story on their beautifully simple 
structure, and connecting something like epic unity 
with their dramatic and lyrical spirit, he would not 
be entirely eclipsed in the comparison ; and the 
event proved that he was right. To some incidents 
in Scott's life, intermediate between the Border 
Minstrelsy and the publication of the Lay, we shall 
advert in our next chapter. Let us now look as far 
forward as January 1805, when the first of his long 
and popular poems appeared. The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel was received with universal and un- 
bounded applause. Thousands who had scarcely 
heard of the Minstrelsy read the Lay. Scott, like 
Byron afterwards, awoke one morning and found 
himself famous. The Lay, Childe Harold, the 
Course of Time, and Smith's Life Drama, have 
probably been the four most decided hits in the 
recent history of poetry. The Lay appeared in a 



LA Y OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 63 

splendid quarto form, a copy of which we were 
fortunate enough to find, some twenty-five years 
after its first publication, in a Glasgow library, not 
quite crumbled away ; and in it first began reading 
this enchanting poem on the street, amidst the 
glimmering lights of an April eve. The first edi- 
tion of 750 copies was speedily exhausted ; others 
followed rapidly ; and before the author super- 
intended the annotated edition in 1830, nearly 
44,000 copies had been disposed of. 

Amidst the general outburst of applause, some 
voices of special value and influence were soon 
distinguishable, such as those of Jeffrey in the 
Edinburgh Review, George Ellis, William Stewart 
Rose, Charles James Fox, and William Pitt. Pitt 
purposed Scott's professional promotion ; and after 
repeating some lines from the poem describing 
the old harper's embarrassment when asked to 
play, said, 'This is a sort of thing I might have 
expected in painting, but could never have fancied 
capable of being given in poetry.' 

Looking at the Lay critically and calmly from 
our present point of view, we can hardly concur 
with the extremely high verdicts which the men of 
that time passed upon it. It is certainly not a 
great poem, and as certainly it is not in the main 
a piece of consummate art. But it has many very 



64 WALTER SCOTT. 

beautiful passages and spirit-stirring scenes. And 
these are set in a framework of the most exquisite 
construction, superior perhaps to anything of the 
kind in the compass of poetry, — that even of the 
Queens Wake, which has been so much admired, 
not excepted. The whole has a gaiety and a grace- 
fulness of movement, blended with a supernatural 
awe and weird grandeur about it which may be best 
imaged in its own lines : 

' He knew by the streamers that shot so bright, 
That spirits were riding the northern light? 

The poem has more of lyrical fire, and unmiti- 
gated, elastic energy, than any of those which suc- 
ceeded it. Scott's genius is throughout at the 
gallop, and it is that of a winged Pegasus career- 
ing over steeps 

' Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride.' 

Let it be remembered, too, as explaining the en- 
thusiasm of the reception, that this was the open- 
ing of a new and fresh vein of national poetry. 
The harp of Caledonia had but just begun to sound 
to the master hand of Burns, when he was snatched 
prematurely away; and it. had remained silent till 
Scott awoke it again into loftier if not tenderer 
vibrations. And then there were one or two pas- 
sages which, in their sweetness and finish, as well 



LA Y OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 65 

as in the patriotic feeling which breathed through 
them, had seldom been surpassed. Such was the 
description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight, which 
ranks with the moonlight scene in the Iliad, and 
which, if not so grand, is more spiritual in its 
beauty. And such is that noble burst commencing, 

* Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself has said, 
This is my own, my native land V 

Such passages have long had a hackneyed look, 
from the frequency of quotation, and worse, the 
vulgarity of recitation to which they have been sub- 
jected ; but conceive their effect on Scotch and 
Border blood when new. Conceive them published 
for the first time now : what a sensation they would 
produce ! As it was, all Scotland instantly ranked 
them with the close of the Cottars Saturday Night, 
and felt, and felt truly, that a kindred genius to 
Burns had risen in their midst. And as England's 
own poets at that period were few and far between, 
the greatest of them struggling with natal gloom 
and envious mists, she, too, added her unanimous 
voice to the acclamations amidst which Walter 
Scott ascended the poetical throne. 



E 



CHAPTER V. 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 




^FTER closing his labours on the Border 
Minstrelsy, Scott took a trip to London, 
Sf$z^) partly for the purpose of making some 
researches in reference to Sir Tristram, and partly 
to enjoy its literary society. His wife went with 
him, and they were domesticated under the roof of 
Mr. Charles Dumergne, an intimate acquaintance 
of Mrs. Scott's relatives the Carpenters, surgeon- 
dentist to the royal family, and a man of large- 
hearted hospitality. In London he had much in- 
tercourse with Heber, and with Mackintosh, then in 
the zenith of his conversational supremacy. These 
were old acquaintances ; but he met now for the 
first time Samuel Rogers, William Stuart Rose, 
and some other men of great literary eminence. 
He spent a happy week at Sunninghill with his 

friends the Ellises, who had the luxury of hearing 
66 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 67 

the first two or three cantos of the Lay read to 
them under one of the old oaks in Windsor Forest. 
Lockhart is careful to record that in this journey 
Scott was accompanied by a very large and fine 
bull-terrier called 'Camp,' one of the greatest 
favourites among the poet's many dear canine com- 
panions, whom he loved, however, not, like Byron, 
for their unlikeness to men, but for the human 
elements which they exhibited. 

Thence they proceeded to Oxford, and here 
Scott saw for the first time Richard Heber's 
brother Reginald, afterwards the famous Bishop of 
Calcutta, who had just gained the poetical prize 
for the year, and read to Scott, at a breakfast-table 
where he met him, the MS. of his Palestine. Scott 
noticed that in the verses on Solomon's temple one 
remarkable circumstance had escaped him, namely, 
that no tool had been used in its erection ; when 
Reginald retired for a few minutes, and returned 
with the best lines in the poem : 

'• No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 
Majestic silence !' 

In October 1802 the Edinburgh Review began, 
and within a year of its commencement Scott be- 
came a contributor; and in the course of 1803 
and 1804 he reviewed Southey's Amadis of Gaul > 



68 WALTER SCOTT. 

Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, Godwin's 
Life of Chancer, Ellis' Specimens of Ancient English 
Poetry, and the Life and Works of Chatter ton. 
Scott's reviews in the Edinburgh, Quarterly, Black- 
wood's Magazine, and other periodicals, are all of a 
pleasant, light, and gossiping kind. He nowhere 
in them puts forth his whole strength, is nowhere 
elaborate, never propounds principles, and his 
critical dicta are often very questionable. But his 
learning is great, his anecdotage exhaustless, his 
style easy and conversational always, though care- 
less often, his vein of humour now and then ex- 
ceedingly rich, and, above all, his spirit genial and 
kindly : he is never savage ; and one contrasts him 
favourably in this point with the truculence and 
malignity of Brougham, and even with the smart 
and snappish severities in which Lord Jeffrey some- 
times forgot his better nature. We may mention 
here that Thomas Thomson, the Registrar- General 
for Scotland, an intimate friend both of Scott's 
and Jeffrey's, assured us that Brougham often com- 
pelled Jeffrey to insert some of the fiercest dia- 
tribes, such as that on Walker's Defence of Order, 
and on Byron's Hours of Idleness, against his will. 
Jeffrey was naturally generous and amiable ; 
Brougham, in those days at least, all that was the 
reverse. 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 69 

But Scott had other matters to occupy him 
besides literature and ballad poetry. Napoleon 
Bonaparte had ' accumulated all the materials of 
fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud,' 
which hung on the other side of the Channel like a 
menacing meteor. But, unlike the creditors of the 
Nabob of Arcot, the inhabitants of Britain did not 
regard it with 'idle stupefaction.' They rose as 
one man to encounter and roll it back. Our pul- 
pits, from that of Robert Hall downwards, rang 
with anathemas on the usurper of France, and with 
appeals to the patriotic sentiments of Great Britain. 
Volunteer corps were formed all over the country. 
That 

1 Wall of fire around our much-loved isle,' 

which Burns had anticipated in prophetic ecstasy, 
was now actually seen arising ; and no bosom in 
the land beat with more heroic feelings than that 
of Scott. He became quartermaster of the Edin- 
burgh Light Horse, and busied himself in military 
preparations. His blood rose with the prospect of 
danger ; and there can be no doubt that, had the 
haughty threat of Gaul been fulfilled, the poet of 
the Border would have fought with all the courage 
of his ancestors. None but a man of the most 
dauntless bravery and martial enthusiasm could 



7 o WALTER SCOTT. 

have written either the poems or the novels of 
Scott. 

In the same year he for the first time met 
Wordsworth, who was journeying in Scotland, and 
they became fast friends. In many points they 
differed, the objective and the subjective being 
found in divers proportions in their nature ; Words- 
worth being more of the philosophic poet, Scott of 
the northern scald. But they resembled each other 
in the sincerity of their enthusiasm, in their love 
for the simple and primitive in nature and in cha- 
racter, in their attachment to mountain scenery 
and to the antique — both traceable, phrenologists 
would say, to their immense organ of inhabitiveness 
— and in their domestic virtues. Wordsworth ad- 
mired Scott as a man, without exactly believing in 
him as a poet. Scott, while perhaps sagely smiling 
at Wordsworth's A lice Fells and Idiot Boys, appre- 
ciated warmly his higher strains, and owned in him 
the presence of one of the great original masters 
of song, so sparsely sown in these later times. 
When the Lake poet returned to England, he wrote 
Scott a characteristic letter, closing thus : 'Your 
sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though 
slow to tise a word of such solemn meaning to any 
one. W. Wordsworth.' 

This year (1803) also Scott published a small 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 71 

edition of Sir Tristram, the chief interest in which 
now is that it is said to be the work of Thomas of 
Ercildoun, or Thomas the Rhymer, and was edited 
by Sir Walter Scott. It obtained its sole circula- 
tion among the antiquarians of that day. 

In 1804 Scott left sweet Lasswade, the home of 
his early wedded life, and the cradle of his nascent 
fame, for Ashestiel, a place that shall always be 
dear to the lovers of poetry. Never shall we at 
least forget the scene of perfect peace it presented 
in a calm though cloudy day of June 1844, with 
the murmur of the Tweed hardly breaking the 
serene silence which lay upon the green hills, the 
woods, the plain, the brook, and the ever-honoured 
mansion where the great minstrel dwelt. It seemed 
to us then, and seems still, far more interesting 
than Abbotsford. That turned out in the long-run 
a foolish speculation, and was darkened by the 
shadows of disaster and of death. With Ashestiel 
the associations and memories are all delightful. 
Scott passed there probably his serenest days. It 
is a place of almost entire solitude, standing by the 
side of a deep ravine covered with trees, down 
which a brook finds its way to the Tweed, from 
which river the mansion is separated by a narrow 
strip of beautiful meadow. All around are the 
silent hills ; not another house is in sight ; and the 



72 WALTER SCOTT. 

nearest town, Selkirk, is seven miles away. ' Pas- 
toral melancholy ' is the pervading feeling of the 
spot, although it is a melancholy more akin to joy 
than to sorrow, and which one would not exchange 
for a millennium of coarse miscalled delights. 

Here Scott set up for a season the staff of his 
rest. It suited him, as in the centre of Ettrick 
Forest, and near the scene of his duties as the 
Sheriff of Selkirkshire. He pleased himself, too, 
to think that Ashestiel belonged to the ancient 
division of the country called Reged. Here he 
took his well-known domestics Thomas Purdie 
and Peter Mathieson into his employment, the one 
as shepherd and the other as coachman. Purdie 
appeared before the Sheriff first as a poacher ; but 
Scott became interested in his story, which he told 
with a mixture of pathos, simplicity, and pawky 
humour, and extended to him forgiveness and 
favour. Tom served him long and faithfully ; and 
we have been told that Scott proposed for his 
epitaph the words, ' Here lies one who might have 
been trusted with untold gold, but not with un- 
measured whisky.' Mathieson and Purdie adored 
Scott, he being one of the very few men who have 
been heroes to their valets. At Ashestiel, too, he 
became intimate with the famous Mungo Park, 
then newly returned from his first travels in Africa, 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 73 

and practising as a surgeon in Selkirk. Park, as 
all the world knows, was a brave, manly, and in- 
teresting character, thoroughly truthful too, and 
who told Scott that he had suppressed certain 
incidents in his travels, lest they should be thought 
too marvellous to be real. He soon tired of the 
life of a country surgeon, and said he would sooner 
be broiling in Africa than riding over dirty roads 
and wild moorlands, rewarded sometimes, after a 
whole night's travel and work, by nothing better 
than a roasted potato and a draught of butter- 
milk. Scott came one day suddenly upon Park by 
the side of the Yarrow, dropping in stones into the 
waters. He asked what he meant, and the traveller 
replied that this was the way he used to find out 
the depths of the rivers in Africa, from the time 
the bubbles took to rise to the surface. This little 
incident convinced Scott that Park was revolving 
the thought of a second journey, which he effected 
accordingly the next year, perishing, all know, in 
one of those African streams. Park spent a night 
at Ashestiel before starting for his journey, and 
next day the friends parted on the Williamhope 
Bridge ; ' the autumnal mist, floating heavily and 
slowly down the valley of the Yarrow,' presenting 
to Scott's fancy a ' striking emblem of the troubled 
and uncertain prospect which his undertaking 



74 WALTER SCOTT. 

afforded.' In leaping a small ditch, Park's horse 
stumbled. ' I am afraid, Mungo,' said the Sheriff, 
' that is a bad omen.' ' Freits follow those who 
follow them,' replied he, smiling, and setting spurs 
to his horse galloped off, and Scott saw him no 
more. Park's eldest brother remained in Scott's 
neighbourhood for several years, and was his fre- 
quent companion in his sports and mountain rides. 
He was himself a man of extraordinary strength 
and of dauntless spirit. Yet he was often alarmed 
by Scott's reckless riding, and once exclaimed, 
' The deil's in ye, Sherra ; ye'll never halt till they 
bring ye hame wi' your feet foremost.' 

The triumphant success of the Lay decided 
Scott's mind henceforth to apply himself mainly 
to literature. The publishers of the first edition 
were Longman & Co. of London, and Archibald 
Constable & Co. of Edinburgh ; the latter house, 
however, having only a small share in the adven- 
ture. Numerous offers were at this time made 
to Scott by eminent booksellers. He was now a 
popular author ; and to such, publishers are for a 
season obedient humble servants. But Scott was 
full of a project of his own, which offered fair at 
first, but ultimately nearly ruined his rising for- 
tunes. James Ballantyne had ere this, as we men- 
tioned, removed to Edinburgh, and Scott entered 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 75 

into a sub rosa partnership with him, embarking 
in his concern almost the whole of his available 
capital. He had fixed to quit the bar, where his 
gains had been steadily though slowly increasing ; 
he had no wish to attach himself exclusively to 
any one of the many publishers who sought to 
monopolize him ; and he determined to found, 
under the name of Ballantyne, a gigantic publish- 
ing business of his own. In this, had he been the 
sole partner or the sole author, he might have 
been successful. But from his connection with 
men inferior to himself as publishers, and still 
more from his connection with men inferior to 
himself as authors, complications arose which 
nearly strangled even the leonine man who alone 
could, and who did afterwards, burst them asunder. 
Meanwhile his mind was teeming with Brob- 
dignagian projects. One of them was an edition 
of the British Poets. And certainly never was 
man so well qualified as he for this task, by 
learning, enthusiasm, cautious judgment, wide 
sympathies, and the powers of interesting narra- 
tive and genial criticism. His only danger had 
been in overloading the text with superfluous 
notes. But Scott's notes to his own poems are 
like no other body's notes : their superfluity is 
pardoned on account of their interest. It would 



76 WALTER SCOTT. 

have been the same had he annotated the works of 
other bards. And his Lives of the Poets, if inferior 
to Johnson's in point, massive power, and sceptral 
majesty, would have far surpassed them in ease, 
variety, research, accurate knowledge, catholic 
taste, and fellow-feeling with genius. The plan, 
however, owing to rivalship among the book- 
sellers, came to nothing. He began then an 
edition of Dryden, to which he prefixed a very 
valuable memoir, written with more care and 
condensation than usual. He wrote, besides, 
several articles for the Edinburgh Review; one on 
Todd's edition of Spenser, another on Godwin's 
Fleetwood (in which he does justice to Caleb 
Williams, but very much underrates St. Leon, a 
romance almost equal to his own Ivanhoe), a 
third on the Poems of Ossian, a fourth on Frois- 
sart, a fifth on Thornton's Sporting Tour, etc. 
Ossian he on the whole admired, and has even 
imitated in his Highland Widow and some other 
of his tales ; and of Macpherson he had formed 
a very different opinion from that which Macaulay 
has paraded so often, and expressed with a bitter- 
ness and animus altogether unaccountable. 

He began Waverley this year ; although, hav- 
ing read some of the opening scenes to William 
Erskine, who disapproved of them, he threw it 



MINOR EVENTS AND EFFORTS. 77 

aside. He was visited now by Southey, and they 
became friends, though never very warm or inti- 
mate ones. There were a certain strain and 
starch about Southey which Scott did not quite 
relish, highly as he admired his abilities and 
principles. He resumed his Volunteerism ' with 
redoubled energy. James Skene of Rubislaw 
spent a considerable portion of the autumn of 
1805 at Ashestiel, and gives some very interest- 
ing sketches of Scott's occupations and amuse- 
ments about this period of his life. He began 
now, for the first time, the habit he pursued ever 
afterwards, of rising very early, and, as he phrased 
it, ' breaking the neck of the day's work' before 
breakfast, — a practice to which some have ascribed 
in part the limpid clearness, temperate calm, 
freshness, and healthiness of his style. He 
plunged occasionally, with Mr Skene, amidst the 
wild moorlands of Moffatdale, St Mary's Loch, 
Loch Skene, the Grey Mare's Tail, and the neigh- 
bouring wildernesses, drinking in large draughts of 
inspiration, which Marmion was to prove had not 
been imbibed in vain. He visited Wordsworth, 
then resident on the banks of Grasmere ; and one 
day there rested on the brow of Helvellyn, sham- 
ing all its eagles, three of the mightiest spirits in 
Britain — Scott, Wordsworth, and Humphrey Davy. 



78 WALTER SCOTT. 

From Grasmere he carried his wife to spend a few 
days at the old haunt of their loves, Gilsland ; and 
they were enjoying themselves much there when 
the news arrived that a French force was about 
to land in Scotland, and that all the leal-hearted 
volunteers of the Lothians and the Border must 
assemble themselves in Dalkeith. The poet in- 
stantly obeyed the summons ; and in twenty-four 
hours his noble horse, whom he had fortunately 
brought along with him, bore him in one fiery and 
unmitigated gallop for fully a hundred miles to the 
place of rendezvous. Here he found the scene in 
The Antiquary realized. It was a false alarm ; the 
beacon fires had been lit prematurely. But he 
met a goodly array of friends, who had come on 
the same April errand with himself ; and as there 
was no fray toward, they feasted in lieu thereof, 
and great were the mirth and martial jollity that 
ensued. 

Nor had his time on the road been lost. He 
had during his ride composed The BarcTs Incanta- 
tion, one of his most vigorous minor pieces, and 
assuredly it ' rings to boot and saddle/ 




CHAPTER VI. 



A RUN OF PERSONAL AND LITERARY SUCCESS. 




IGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIX 
opened favourably for our poet. He 
was appointed one of the Principal 
Clerks of Session, with a salary of ^"Soo a year 
and a few hours' labour, if labour it could be 
called, which amounted only to the duty of regis- 
tering the decisions of the judges during the sitting 
of the Court. And there for a quarter of a century 
was Scott to sit, the observed of all observers, 
sometimes listening to the pleadings of the bar, 
and sometimes not ; occasionally writing poetry 
(as when moved by Jeffrey's eloquence he began 
The Pibroch of Donnel Dhtc, his pen galloping to 
the tune of the pleader's voice), and often lost in 
the far-stretching reveries of his own spirit, wan- 
dering over the Highland hills, or carrying on 

imaginary conversations which were afterwards to 

79 



8o WALTER SCOTT. 

be wrought into his world-famous fictions. Lock- 
hart, indeed, tries to find a matter of marvel in 
reference 'to his hero, by magnifying the work he 
had to do at the clerk's table. But we have con- 
versed with lawyers of experience, who have 
assured us that the situation was little other than 
a sinecure. In order to gain this position he had 
to repair to London, where Lord Spencer and Mr. 
Fox favoured his claim, where he met for the first 
time with Canning and Frere, and made, besides, 
the acquaintance of two remarkable ladies of very 
different character, and moving in very different 
spheres — Joanna Baillie, and the unfortunate Caro- 
line Princess of Wales. Joanna he ever afterwards 
regarded with brotherly affection, as she most 
assuredly deserved, at once on account of her 
masculine genius and her feminine virtues, and 
that blended simplicity and dignity which made 
her the true spirit-sister of Scott. His opinion of 
Caroline was at this time favourable. He calls 
her 'an enchanting Princess, who dwells in an 
enchanted palace, and I cannot help thinking that 
her Prince must labour under some malignant spell 
when he denies himself her society.' He after- 
wards, however, in common with all the Tory party 
except Canning, altered his view, and spoke of her 
in language unworthy of a gentleman or a man. 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 81 

Lord Melville was at this time the leading power 
in Scotland. His character was complex. To 
high talent and much rough kindness he added 
many of the faults, and even vices, which charac- 
terized the statesmen of the olden time. Loved 
by his tenants at Dunira and his neighbours in 
Comrie, — who combined in building the handsome 
obelisk to his memory which stands on Dunmore, 
and looks down on one of the noblest prospects in 
Scotland : the massive mountains of Glenlednick 
behind ; the Deil's Caldron sending up from below 
a voice of thunder, unsoftened by the muffling of 
its woods ; the plain of Dalginross and the village 
of Comrie, washed by three mountain rivers to 
the south ; Loch Earn ; the Abruchill Hills and 
Benvoirlich on the west ; and the Lomond Hills 
rounding off the prospect eastward — a prospect 
Scott must have seen when he visited his friend, — 
Lord Melville was hated by the Whigs, who were 
now the governing party ; and they resolved to 
impeach him. He was acquitted, however, in spite 
of all the manly eloquence of Whitbread, his prin- 
cipal assailant ; and his friends in Scotland held a 
dinner on the occasion. Though indebted for his 
recent promotion to the Whig party, Scott not 
only attended the dinner, but indited a song 
steeped in ferocious Toryism, and using the follow- 



82 WALTER SCOTT. 

ing truculent language about Fox, who was then 
known to be under a mortal illness : 

' The brewer (Whitbread) we'll hoax, 
Tallyho to the Fox, 
And drink Melville for ever as long as we live.' 

Nothing in all Scott's conduct gave such offence 
as this allusion. Lord Cockburn tells us that 
some of his warmest friends were cooled, and that 
a few of his enemies never forgave him. The 
amiable Countess of Rosslyn was one of the 
former number ; and so far down as the date of 
the Queen's trial, the Scotsman reprinted the verses 
to Scott's disadvantage. It was one of the few 
errata of his life : he felt so himself very soon after- 
wards, and made in some measure the amende 
honorable in the well-known lines on Fox in 
Marmion. 

He was all through the brief reign of the Whigs 
in a very uneasy and irritable state of mind. On 
one occasion, returning from a meeting where he 
had been opposing some proposed innovations in 
the legal courts, and displayed unusual freedom 
and force of eloquence, and crossing the Mound 
in company with Jeffrey and another reforming 
friend, who were for treating the matter lightly, 
he actually turned his head round, and in vain 
sought to conceal his tears by resting it on the 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 83 



wall of the Mound, as he said, ' No, no, gentlemen, 
'tis no laughing matter. Little by little, whatever 
your wishes may be, you will destroy and under- 
mine, till nothing that makes Scotland Scotland 
shall remain.' 

In November 1806 he commenced Marmion, 
the second of his great poems in time, and in some 
respects the first in talent. And ere he had read 
a line of it Constable offered 1000 guineas, — a sum 
then thought enormous, but which Scott instantly 
accepted, the more eagerly as he needed money 
to help his brother Thomas. He studied for 
Marmion amidst the wilds of Ashestiel, often 
sitting by himself under some tall old ashes stand- 
ing on a knoll in' a neighbouring farm which still 
bears the name of the Sheriff's Knowe ; some- 
times to be seen under a huge oak by the brink of 
the Tweed ; sometimes wandering far from home, 
with no companion but his dog, ' in among those 
green and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow 
creeps from her fountains,' returning not till the 
evening, and often, in his own language, ' having 
many a grand gallop among the braes' while revolv- 
ing some of the more stirring scenes, or composing 
some of the more rapturous measures of the poem. 
Mr. Skene, however, informs us that the Battle 
of Flodden was composed by Scott during the 



84 WALTER SCOTT. 

autumn of 1807, when at quarters with the cavalry 
at Portobello, and that in the intervals of drilling 
he used to walk his powerful black steed up and 
down by himself upon the sands within the beating 
of the surge, and now and then he would plunge in 
his spurs and go off as if at the charge, with the 
spray dashing about him. He often repeated to 
Skene, as they rode back to Musselburgh, the 
verses he had composed in the morning. In the 
course of this year he visited London to find out 
new materials for Dryden, and the Tories, now 
in power, welcomed him with increased warmth, 
since he had stuck to his colours, and even suffered 
in their cause. In returning home he visited Lich- 
field, and saw Miss Seward, who describes him 
* coming like a sunbeam to her dwelling,' and gives 
a very lady-like picture, or rather inventory, of his 
' brown hair, flaxen eyebrows, long upper lip, and 
light grey eyes.' She thought his recitation of 
poetry, like Johnson's, too monotonous and violent. 
When she showed him, in Carey's Dante, the pass- 
age where Michael Scott occurs (in the fourth 
canto of the Inferno), he said that though he 
admired the spirit and skill of the version, he could 
find no pleasure in the Divi7ia Commedia. The 
plan appeared to him unhappy — the personal 
malignity and strange mode of revenge presump- 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 85 

tuous and uninteresting. Scott must have forgot 
all this, when we find him in Italy remarking to 
Mr. Cheney that it was mortifying to think how 
Dante thought none worth sending to hell except 
Italians ; when Mr. C. remarked, that he of all 
men had no right to make this complaint, as his 
ancestor Michael Scott is introduced there ! 

Marmion appeared, amidst a hum of general 
expectation, on the 23d of February 1808. It was 
received by the public at large with an enthusiasm 
only second to that which had welcomed the Lay, 
but it was rather roughly handled by the Edin- 
burgh Review. Jeffrey had been engaged to dine 
with Scott on the day the review appeared ; but feel- 
ing a little apprehensive of the consequences, wrote 
an explanatory note along with the copy of the 
number. Scott replied in a good spirit. Jeffrey, 
although with manifest reluctance, came, and the 
poet received him with his usual bland courtesy. 
But conceive the critic's feelings when, as he was 
leaving, the hostess of the house said, ' Well, good 
night, Mr. Jeffrey : dey tell me you have abused 
Scott in the Review, and I hope Mr. Constable 
has paid you very well for writing it.' She never 
spoke to him again. The critique in some points 
was unfair. It asserted, for example, that Scott 
throughout neglected Scottish feelings and Scot- 



86 WALTER SCOTT. 

tish characters, — a charge which to name is to 
stamp with absurdity, and which Jeffrey could 
hardly have himself seriously entertained. The 
faults of Marmion were obvious, but they were 
venial, and the critic brought down on them a 
weight of disapprobation entirely disproportioned 
to their guilt. It was as though the vagrant 
courses of a truant boy had been punished by 
death. But justice was done to the genius of the 
author, and the Battle of Flodden especially was 
praised as more Homeric than even Homer's best. 

The general impression about Marmion now is, 
that while in plan imperfect, in the choice of hero 
unfortunate, and in composition very unequal, it is 
in parts and passages superior to his other poems, 
and shows a power which, had it been systema- 
tically exerted on a worthier subject, and had not 
the age of epics been over, would have achieved a 
Scottish Iliad, or, at the least, an Orlando Furioso. 
But Scott, industrious though he was, wanted the 
true epic patience, ' the long choosing and beginning 
late/ the calm and cumulative workmanship, and 
the majestic serenity of the heroic poet. His best 
things were dashed off at a heat. Like the tiger, 
if his first spring failed, he never tried a second, 
but retired grumbling to his jungle ; and if he 
could not go through his subject at the pace of the 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 87 

whirlwind, he was motionless. The preliminary- 
epistles were read with as much pleasure as any- 
other parts of the book, although entirely uncon- 
nected with it. They were beautiful excrescences, 
and indeed had been at first intended for separate 
publication. 

Marmion was much admired by Scott's special 
friends as well as by the public, although Words- 
worth's severe and peculiar taste was unsatisfied. 
In his letter, after giving the new poem some equi- 
vocal and scanty praise, with what gusto he turns 
to a more favourite theme — the beautiful nature 
around him ! ' The spring has burst out upon us 
all at once, and the vale is now in exquisite beauty. 
A gentle shower has fallen this morning, and I 
hear the thrush who has built in my orchard 
singing amain.' How characteristic ! What were 
Tantallon Castle, ' Edinburgh throned on crags/ 
or Flodden Field, to Grasmere in spring ? what 
Scott's powerful though unequal and heated strains 
to the voice of the thrush, 

' Pouring her full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art V 

Jeffrey's critique produced important conse- 
quences. It cut, although at first silently, the tie 
between Scott and the Edinburgh Review, and 



WALTER SCOTT. 



combined, along with circumstances of a later date, 
to cool the poet with Constable. Shortly after its 
appearance we find Scott moving heaven and earth 
to establish in London the Quarterly Review as a 
counterweight to the Edinburgh both in literary 
criticism and in politics, — a project in which, ere 
the end of the year, he was successful. 

Meanwhile his Dry den appeared in eighteen 
volumes ; he aided Henry Weber, a poor German 
hack, who ultimately went deranged in Scott's 
house, in his Ancient Metrical Romajices ; began a 
laborious edition of Swift ; edited Strutt's Queen 
Hoo Hall, Carleton's War of the Spanish Succes- 
sion, the Memoirs of Cary Duke of Monmouth ; 
and projected a general edition of the Novelists of 
Britain, with notes. He took, besides, a lively 
interest in the affairs, always involved and unlucky, 
of James Hogg, and gave effectual patronage to 
John Struthers of Glasgow, the author of The Poor 
Man's Sabbath, a man of remarkable ability, at 
first a shoemaker by trade, and to the end a ' poor 
man,' but who wrote good poetry and powerful 
prose, and has always been reckoned an honour to 
his native city. Scott got his poem published for 
him, and we find Struthers afterwards making a 
pilgrimage of gratitude to Abbotsford. 

Toward the close of 1808 the breach between 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 



Constable and Scott widened to its utmost. It was 
precipitated by the appearance in the 26th number 
of the Edinburgh Review of an article on Don 
Pedro Cevallos. This paper was written by Lord 
Brougham, and forms perhaps the best specimen 
extant of his style, which had not then got so in- 
volved, parenthetical, and cumbrous as it became 
afterwards. It is a most powerful and eloquent 
diatribe, and told like a bombshell in the Tory 
camp. It irritated Scott's political prejudices ; 
and he, in common with many of the Edinburgh 
citizens, withdrew their subscriptions. (In Con- 
stable's list of subscribers to the Edinburgh Review 
there appears, opposite Scott's name, an indignant 
dash of Constable's pen — ' Stopt ! ! ! ') He set 
himself immediately to take vengeance on his 
adversaries : first, by establishing John Ballantyne 
as a publisher in opposition to Constable ; and 
secondly, by completing the arrangements for the 
Quarterly Review. In the former he after a season 
failed, but in the latter he succeeded. The Quar- 
terly Review soon came out under Gifford in great 
force. 

In the spring of 1809 Scott again visited London 
to prosecute his gigantic plans. There, along with 
Canning, Croker, and Ellis, he concocted the new 
Review. Coleridge, at that time unfortunate as an 



90 WALTER SCOTT. 

author, depressed in spirits, and straitened in cir- 
cumstances, was nevertheless forcing his way into 
fame by his matchless conversational and lecturing 
powers, and had become, next to Scott himself, 
the lion of the season, and the great orator of the 
dining-tables in the metropolis. Scott met him at 
Sotheby's, and was much struck by his talk, al- 
though probably he did not understand it all, any 
more than his other auditors, or sometimes the 
lecturer himself. 

On his return he commenced the Lady of the 
Lake. While writing it he was subject to fits of 
absence. His mind was in the Trosachs ; and 
once he mistook another house in Castle Street for 
his own, but cried out, when he discovered the 
blunder, ' Ah ! there are too many bairns' bannets 
here for this hoose to be mine ! ' He went with his 
wife in autumn to revisit the well-known localities 
of his new poem, and satisfied himself in his own 
person that a good horseman might gallop from 
Loch Venachar to Stirling within the space he was 
to allot to Fitz- James. He then visited Ross 
Priory and Buchanan House, and read there to the 
assembled guests the description of the stag-chase 
which he had not long before composed, — read it 
almost in the shadow of Ben Ledi. 

At Buchanan House he saw, for the first time, 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 91 

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviezvcrs, and 
was not at all annoyed by the young poet's attack 
on himself. He had read the Hours of Idleness, 
and even from it had predicted the future fame of 
the poet — had deprecated the article in the Edin- 
burgh Review, and once thought of remonstrating 
with Jeffrey on the subject. 

He issued this year an edition of Sir Ralph 
Sadler s State Papers, in three quarto volumes. 
John Kemble visited him in the autumn, and 
' seduced him somewhat into the old compotatory 
habits of "Colonel Grogg.'" It was on this occa- 
sion that the twain were pursued by a furious 
bull. They tried to escape by crossing a stream, 
but found it in spate, when Kemble exclaimed, in 
all the pomp of stage declamation (as Scott used 
to relate with exquisite mimicry), 'The flood is 
angry, Sheriff; methinks I'll get me up into a 
tree!' But no tree was at hand; and had not 
the dogs succeeded in diverting the animal, King 
John's days had been numbered. This year Miss 
Seward died ; but her loss was more than supplied 
to Scott by his becoming acquainted with Daniel 
Terry, who afterwards adapted so many of his 
novels for the stage, and was, besides, a warm, 
intelligent, and amusing friend. 

1 8 10 was one of Scott's brightest years. Early 



92 WALTER SCOTT. 

in May appeared the Lady of the Lake, and was 
received with boundless enthusiasm. The critics 
and the public were for once of the same opinion 
to an iota. On all the roads leading to the 
Trosachs was suddenly heard the rushing of 
many horses and chariots. Old inns were crowded 
to suffocation ; bad dinners and breakfasts, and 
enormous charges, were endured with exemplary 
patience ; and new inns sprung up like mushrooms. 
Post-hire permanently rose. Every corner of that 
fine gorge was explored, and every foot of that 
beautiful loch was traversed, by travellers carrying 
copies of the book in their hands ; and as they 
sailed toward Glengyle, or climbed the grey scalp 
of Ben An, or sate in the shady hollow of Coir- 
nan-Uriskin, or leaned over the still waters of Loch 
Achray, repeating passages from it with unfeigned 
rapture. It was as if a ray from another sphere 
had fallen on and revealed a nook of matchless 
loveliness, and all rejoiced in the gleam and its 
revelation. 

The Lady of the Lake has always been, as a 
whole, our favourite among Scott's poems. We 
love it for the delicious naturalness and interest 
of the story, — the breathless rapidity of the verse, 
reminding you of the gallop of the gallant grey 
which bore its hero in the storm of chase till he 



A RUN OF SUCCESS. 93 

sank in death ; the freshness of its spirit, like 
morning dew sparkling on the heath flowers of 
Ellen's Isle ; its exquisitely assorted and con- 
trasted characters, — and because we have known 
from boyhood so well the scenery of the poem : 
Glenartney's hazel shade ; the wild heights of 
Uamvar; lone Glenfinlas; Ben Ledi's heaving sides 
and hoary summit ; the down-rushing masses of 
Ben Venue ; Loch Achray, as sweet, if not so soli- 
tary still, as when Allan Bane uttered his thrilling 
farewell ; and the gnarled defile of the Trosachs, 
in which to fancy's ear the horn of Fitz-James is 
heard 'still sounding for evermore.' In the un- 
mixed delight afforded by this poem there is no 
parallel in literature, save in two or three of the 
author's own novels, or in a few of Shakspeare's 
plays ; and he that has given that to all readers 
may well defy carping criticism. Walter Savage 
Landor justly magnifies its closing verses as un- 
equalled in princely dignity and gracefulness. 

In the same propitious year Scott recommenced 
Waverley, but threw it again aside upon a cold 
criticism from James Ballantyne. 



CHAPTER VII 

ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD — GLIMPSE OF FAMILY, 
DOMESTIC CIRCUMSTANCES, AND HOME LIFE. 




N the Lady of the Lake Scott's poetical 

career had come to its height. He 

had come to the first 'Rest and be 

Thankful' in his upward course. Even then, 

indeed, as usually happens, the chariot of his 

triumph had a slave riding behind it. But before 

speaking of the business entanglements which 

were beginning slow r ly to gather round him, we 

shall now look at his domestic circumstances, 

growing family, and his change of residence, and 

what it implied. 

Scott's married life, as we saw, commenced 

under auspices on the whole favourable. We 

are aware that rumours affecting Mrs. Scott's 

prudence, education, economy, and other still 

more indispensable virtues in the female charac- 
94 



ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 95 

ter, were long and are still afloat, and that many- 
did not hesitate to say that the match was un- 
happy, and that she was by no means a fitting 
life-companion for Scott. But, in the first place, 
we wonder where a lady exactly adapted to and 
on the level of a man like Scott could at that time 
be found. Would Miss Stuart of Fettercairn have 
been the person? She was never tried, and we 
have our doubts on the matter. Joanna Baillie 
we have called his ' soul's sister/ but a soul's sister 
may be sometimes a poor heart and home wife. 
(We shall quote immediately what Miss Baillie 
herself says of Mrs. Scott.) The marriage, no 
doubt, was a hasty one ; but hasty marriages have 
often been happy, — the difference only being, that 
the disenchantment which takes place in all mar- 
riages to a certain extent may, in these 'love at 
first sight' matches, begin a little sooner, and 
contrast somewhat more strongly with the first 
effervescence of feeling. But in them, as well 
as in the others, the re-reaction, so beautifully 
described by Emerson in his paper on * Love,' 
usually takes place, and the object of ardent first 
passion becomes 

1 A gentle wife— though fairy none ;' 
and a 'thorough good understanding' established 



96 WALTER SCOTT. 

between them makes up for the once wild and 
tumultuous love of espousals. We think this was 
the case Avith Scott. If his wife did not come 
up to the high-strung expectations he had formed 
when courting her at Gilsland, or toasting her 
all that September night with Shortrede, she was 
nevertheless an affectionate partner, a kind mother ; 
and her faults, whatever they were, did not com- 
promise her status in society, and bore hardest on 
herself. Scott, when he met Byron in London in 
1815, spoke to him warmly of his domestic com- 
fort, and the unhappy poet (then himself married) 
envied his friend's lot. Henry Crabb Robinson 
records the following in his journal : ' Mrs. Walter 
Scott was spoken of rather disparagingly, when 
Miss Baillie gave her this good word : " When I 
visited her, I saw a great deal to like. . She seemed 
to admire and look up to her husband. She was 
very kind to her guests. Her children were well 
bred, and the house was in excellent order. And 
she had some smart roses in her cap, and I did 
not like her the less for that.'" Scott, as we shall 
see, sincerely and deeply mourned her loss. Alto- 
gether, Mrs., latterly Lady Scott, although neither 
a Minerva nor a Venus, neither a Miss Baillie, Mrs. 
Hemans, or Madame de Stael, neither a Rebecca, 
Jeanie Deans, or Die Vernon, was a very fair speci- 



ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 97 

men of a poet's wife, and so Scott accordingly- 
rated her. 

Scott had in all four children, two boys and two 
girls. Charlotte Sophia, afterwards Mrs. Lockhart, 
was born on the 15th November 1799. She is 
described as by far the best of the family, 
the likest her father, was his special favourite, 
and devoted to him, amiable, full of a gentle 
enthusiasm, and a beautiful singer of the 'auld 
Scottish sangs ' and Border ballads. Walter, also 
a great favourite of the father, was born 28th 
October i8or. Scott, in his later days, doted on 
his son's personal appearance and athletic accom- 
plishments, and used to say, ' Isn't he a fine fellow?' 
The intellect of the sire, however,* like Hamlet 
in the mutilated play, was, we fear, omitted by 
special desire ; nor was the paternal prudence con- 
spicuous in the character. Ann, born 2d February 
1803, was the wag of the family, with a good deal 
of tart, sardonic humour in her composition, as well 
as warm attachment to her father. Charles, the 
youngest, was born on the 24th December 1805, 
studied at Lampeter and Oxford, became a clerk 
in the Foreign Office, was attached to the Embassy 
at Naples, and accompanied his father part of his 
last melancholy journey. 

Scott warmly loved children, his own and others. 
G 



9 3 WALTER SCOTT. 

We may refer our readers, in proof of this, to Dr. 
John Brown's delightful little paper entitled Pet 
Marjorie, a paper intensely interesting in itself, 
as descriptive of a young girl of promise early re- 
moved — lest we might imagine she should ever 
become less than '#, little lower than the angels ' — 
and one of the sweetest of those ' child cherubs ' 
whom so many memories cherish as having sparkled, 
been exhaled, and gone to heaven ; and interesting, 
as revealing a secret flowery nook in the history of 
a great and good man, which otherwise would have 
been unsuspected. What finer spectacle than that 
of Scott with sweet Marjory on his knee, or in a 
corner of his plaid, or reciting poetry to him till 
he blubbered and shook with emotion — the lion 
dandling the kid ! To his own children Scott was 
less a sire than a companion — a playmate called 
1 Papa.' He rollicked, laughed, tumbled with them, 
told them stories ; and all the while was insinuat- 
ing instruction into their minds. He allowed them 
to read no Pinnock's Catechisms, and other rubbish 
pretending to teach children science, and set old 
heads upon young shoulders by some premature 
and preposterous process ; but he let them loose, as 
he had been in his early time let loose, on Blue- 
beard, Jack the Giant-killer, Ali Bab a, and Aladdin 
with the Wonderful Lamp. And as they read to- 



ASHEST1EL TO ABBOTSFORD. 99 

gether, one could hardly distinguish the glee of the 
parent from that of the children, so merry and 
ringing was the laughter which rose around and 
enveloped them all. He taught them history, and 
particularly that of their own country, with special 
care ; and on Sundays he often, after morning 
service, took them with him to the braeside, and 
told them scriptural narratives, with all the fas- 
cinating power which distinguished his fictions, 
adding new interest to the most interesting stories 
in the world. The Lambs have given us Tales 
from Shakspeare, and they are admirable ; but what 
' Tales from Scripture ' could Scott have produced ! 
He did not send his daughters to boarding-schools 
to be ' finished ' (a word with two edges ! ), but 
he had a private governess of approved character 
for them ; and he took care, above all, that they 
should be well instructed in Scottish music and 
song, which he loved, as he did everything that 
was Scottish, with his whole heart, and soul, and 
mind, and strength. 

Strange, after such training, that his family did 
not make a greater figure, some one will say. 
There might have been counteracting elements. 
On the whole, however, they were a comfort and 
a blessing to Scott : cheered him when his great 
calamities came upon him ; stood round his death- 



ioo WALTER SCOTT. 

bed and received his last breath. And what more 
would we have, the rather as Scott has left hun- 
dreds of ' dream children,' and men have them to 
■S&ace and to inspire them for evermore ? 

At home, Scott was not only happy himself, but 
a spring of pleasure to all that knew him. No one 
worked harder, no one enjoyed life more. This is 
almost always the case : even the galley-slave is in 
heaven compared to the idle man ; his labour by 
practice becomes light, his moments of leisure are 
divine, and his sleep is Elysium. We are never weary 
of seeing Scott, as Lockhart/ describes him, having 
finished his task in the morning, coming down 
stairs rubbing his hands for glee ; and having laid 
in the amplest stores a Scotch breakfast-table could 
supply, sallying forth to his well-won recreation, — 
his walk with ' Camp ' or ' Maida,' his gallop o'er 
the hills, or his picnic party with friends to Melrose, 
Cauldshields Loch, or his old haunt of Smailholm 
Tower. This was while he spent his vacations in 
the country ; but scarcely less delightful were his 
dinner parties or evening reunions in Castle Street, 
when, surrounded by his family and selected friends, 
he poured out the full riches of his knowledge, of 
his sense, of his fun, of his feeling : at one time 
repeating poetry, such as Wordsworth's Kilchiirn 
Castle, ' with a trumpet voice, while his grey eyes 



ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. ior 

now glowed and now gloomed, and alternate 
fires and clouds seemed to flicker and float over 
that pile of forehead;' and anon telling ludicrous 
stories, 'while his lungs did crow like chanticleer, 
his syllables in the struggle growing more em- 
phatic, his accent more strongly Scotch, and his 
voice plaintive with excess of merriment' Some 
consequential people thought his conversation not 
very logical or consecutive ; but Henry Cockburn 
rebuked them by saying, ' I beg your pardon, 
gentlemen ; but Scott's sense has always appeared 
to me more wonderful than even his genius.' 

His dinner-table was, on the whole, a catholic 
one ; ' Tullochgorum ' being then and there his 
gathering march. Jeffrey came to it with his sharp 
features, dark flashing eyes, / rightened - seeming 
hair, and brisk, melodious, endless talk ; Cock- 
burn, with his beautiful oval face, and rich Scotch 
brogue ; Constable, with his distinguished bearing 
and crafty eye ; James Ballantyne, with his ore 
rotundo, black beard, bull neck, turned up upper 
lip, and great gloating eyes ; John his brother, 
with his theatrical airs, frowns, starts, twistings of 
features, and floods of merriment ; Washington 
Irving, with his mild, dreaming countenance ; James 
Hogg, with his Calibanic manners, strong shepherd 
sense, grotesque humour, and inordinate self-esteem, 



102 WALTER SCOTT. 

calling, as the cups circulated, his host ' Wattle,' 
and his hostess Charlotte, till both screamed with 
laughter ; and latterly Lockhart, with his fine 
Italian features, haughty sneer, high, thin, shrill, 
scornful laugh, and keen, cutting, sententious 
conversation ; and Professor Wilson, with his 
'storm of golden hair,' glowing cheek, stately 
stature, wild, tameless eye, and talk wilder and 
more tameless still, although often in the presence 
of the Mighty Minstrel he was silent as are the 
mountains at the rising of the morning sun. 

Others of less note now were there, although then 
thought men of much mark and likelihood. Such 
were his old friends William Erskine and William 
Clerk of Eldin, — the one more a woman, and a 
woman of a very sensitive nature, than a man, the 
other of a more masculine type ; George Cranstoun, 
afterwards Lord Corehouse, a most accomplished 
person in taste, eloquence, and manners ; Scott's 
colleagues in the clerk's office, — David Hume, 
nephew of the historian, Hector MacDonald 
Buchanan of Drummakiln, Sir Robert Dundas of 
Beechwood, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore ; 
the humorists Charles Matthews and Daniel 
Terry ; Adam Fergusson, and Thomas Thomson, 
and his brother the preacher and painter of Dud- 
dingston ; and last, not least, Mr. Morritt of 



ASHESTIEL TO ABBOTSFORD. 103 

Rokeby, one of Scott's steadiest correspondents 
and warmest friends, whose mansion he has im- 
mortalized, although at less expenditure of power 
than might have been desired. These, after all, 
are only a few of the tlite of the Scotland of that 
day who sate often at Scott's hospitable board, 
and were privileged to hear his conversation while 
still in the prime of his early manhood. 

Ashestiel had been a favourite residence of 
Scott's, and never lost its charm for his mind. 
But the lease expired ; and besides, he began to 
hanker after a wider if not a more congenial 
sphere. The aspiration to be a landed proprietor, a 
feudal baron, arose in an evil hour in his mind. He 
was a baron already by nature. His tastes, habits, 
opinions, all proved it. Round his large, lord-like 
being gathered dependants, like the Ballantynes, 
Hogg, Laidlaw, and the rest, as if by inevitable 
instinct. His very dogs and horses — Camp, Maida, 
Lenore (his first charger), Captain, Lieutenant, and 
Brown Adam, who in succession bore him — seemed 
all to recognise in him, what he had playfully 
called himself, an ' Earl Walter/ and some of them 
would not allow themselves to be backed by any 
other rider. But 'Earl Walter' was 'landless, 
landless,' like his own Gregarach, and he could 
not fulfil his dream of feudal power till he had 



104 WALTER SCOTT. 

broad acres as well as a large following. He set 
himself therefore to add field to field, and to build 
for himself a mansion worthy of a Norman, if not 
rather copied after some piece of aerial architec- 
ture — some castle in the clouds, 

1 For ever flushing round a summer's sky.' 

The result was Abbotsford. 

In 181 1 his salary had, through a new arrange- 
ment of Court of Session matters, been increased 
from £800 to ^1300. The Lady of the Lake had 
been a triumphant mercantile success. Flushed 
with this, Scott fixed his eyes on a small farm 
which lay a few miles from Ashestiel, and was soon 
to be in the market. It included a spot where a 
battle had taken place in 1526 between the Earls 
of Angus and Home and the two chiefs of the race 
of Kerr on the one side, and Buccleugh on the 
other ; the possession of King James the Fifth 
being the object, and that prince himself a spec- 
tator, of the contest, — a rude stone still marking 
the spot 

' Where gallant Cessford's life-blood dear 
Reeked on dark Elliot's Border spear.' 

This interested Scott ; and the place, though only 
then a strip of meadow land along the river, with 
some undulating country above, was in the centre 



ASHEST1EL TO ABDOTSFORD. 105 

of the Melrose district, so dear to the poet's mind, 
and had indeed once belonged to the Abbey, as 
the word A bbotsford itself indicated. At all events, 
the purchase was made, and Scott proceeded to 
improve, to plant, to annex, to build, and, in fine, to 
flit, in the end of May 181 2, leaving Ashestiel with 
much regret, in which we think all his admirers 
must share. Yet Abbotsford, if it was to be the 
grave of Scott's towering worldly hopes, was to be 
the cradle of the Waverley Novels. 

In 1 812 he was occupied with minor matters: 
he read Byron's Childe Harold, and frankly ad- 
mitted its transcendent power ; began the poem 
Rokeby, and visited the place Rokeby ; passed by 
Hexham, near which he met the famous black- 
smith John Lundie, turned doctor, whose specifics 
were ' laudamy and calamy', and who consoled 
himself with the thought that if he did accidentally 
kill a few Southrons by his drugs, it would be long 
ere he made up for Flodden ! corresponded with 
and cheered the heart of worthy George Crabbe, 
the poet ; and, in fine, published Rokeby ; and when 
that poem had appeared, returned to his ' Patmos 
of Abbotsford, as blithe as bird on tree.' 

Rokeby was pronounced the first decided failure 
among his poems. The Vision of Don Roderick, 
indeed, which appeared a year or two before, was 



WALTER SCOTT. 



not a great success ; but then it was not a great 
effort. It claimed to be only an improvise, pub- 
lished for a benevolent purpose. Rokeby was a 
serious trial of strength. But although its sale was 
rapid and large, its reception was not nearly so 
favourable as even Roderick. It had less power 
than any of his previous poems, and consisted 
of more commonplace and Minerva press -like 
materials. It sprung, too, less from impulse than 
from a desire to gratify Mr. Morritt, by ' doing ' his 
beautiful seat for him in song. 






CHAPTER VIII. 

VICISSITUDES IN LIFE, LITERATURE, AND 
BUSINESS— 'WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED. 




^jT was sympathy with the Portuguese, at 
that time trampled under the iron hoof 
of the French armies, which had led Scott 
in 1 8 1 1 to write his Vision of Don Roderick, the 
profits of which he gave to the distressed patriots. 
There were in it two or three noble passages. 
Who has forgot the description of the landing of 
the three nations, English, Scotch, and Irish, on 
the shores of Portugal ? and who that ever heard 
can forget Professor Wilson's recitation of that de- 
scription in his class-room, in the deepest of his 
deep and lingering tones, with the fieriest of his 
soul-quelling glances, and with the most impas- 
sioned of his natural and commanding gestures ? 
The book, however, was less admired than its re- 
view in the Edinburgh, where Jeffrey in his best 
107 



108 WALTER SCOTT. 

style rebuked the author for his silence in reference 
to the good, gallant, and unfortunate Sir John 
Moore, — an omission as inexcusable in a Scotch- 
man, as if one writing an epic on Bruce were to 
take no notice at all of the name of Wallace. 

With a certain falling off in the power of his 
poetry there coincided the uprise of Byron, who, 
after some elegant trifling in his first production, 
and some adroit grinning in his second, began fairly 
to exert his force in the third. Childe Harold's 
Pilgrimage had come like a comet across the lite- 
rary sky, and the poems of Scott seemed tame as 
lunar rainbows in the comparison. The victory of 
the English bard needed but one or two fiery frag- 
ments like the Giaour on his part, and one more 
splendid failure on Scott's (the Lord of the Lsles), 
to make it complete, and, so far as verse was 
concerned, final. Lockhart, indeed, says that the 
success of Byron's first pieces arose chiefly from 
their resemblance to, and unconscious imitation of, 
Scott's poetry. But this is the criticism of a son- 
in-law. Had these poems been mere imitations 
of Scott, they would have fallen powerless,- as all 
echoes do, on the public ear. And whatever re- 
semblance they bore to Scott's, it was not the 
similitude, it was the difference, between the Eng- 
lish and the Scottish poet, and their respective 



VICISSITUDES— l WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED. 109 

styles, which secured Byron's success. The public 
saw intensity substituted for slipshod ease, the pas- 
sionate for the picturesque, the thoughtful for the 
lively, — the scenery, the manners, and the suns of 
Spain and Greece, for those of Scotland ; and the 
change was grateful and stimulating at the time. 
In short, as Scott confessed long after, Byron bett 
(beat) him, although, by happily shifting his ground, 
and, like his own Ivanhoe, disguising himself, he 
more than recovered his laurels. Immediately 
after Rokeby, appeared anonymously his Bridal of 
Tricrmain, which he meant as a trap for the critics, 
Jeffrey particularly, but which was instantly dis- 
covered to be a second or third rate effusion of his 
own master mind. It was the same afterwards 
with Harold the Dauntless, another anonymous 
production of his pen. 

While writing the Vision, Scott lost two of his 
friends very suddenly — President Blair and Lord 
Melville. He tells a curious story about a dentist 
called Dubisson, who met the President the day 
before his death, and he used a particular expres- 
sion to him. ' He met Lord Melville the day before 
his death, who, to the man's surprise, used the same 
expression. Dubisson, after the second death, jocu- 
larly remarked that he himself would be the third 
to die. He was taken ill, and expired in an hour's 



no WALTER SCOTT. 

space ! Lord Melville had been hurried from his 
seat of Dunira in Perthshire to Edinburgh by the 
news of Blair's death. While driving through the 
village of Comrie, two boys, one of them an elder 
brother of ours, were playing on the street. They 
caught a glimpse of him in his carriage, and the 
one said to the other, ' That's a dying man ! ' The 
boy himself could not account for the impulse 
which led him to the exclamation ; but perhaps, 
though Melville was thought in his usual health, 
there might have been some pallid and ghastly 
expression on his face. Scott felt the loss of these 
two men keenly. Blair was a man of colossal 
understanding, the son of Robert Blair of Athel- 
staneford, the author of The Grave. With Mel- 
ville the head of the Tory regime in Scotland 
dropped off, and its palmy and pristine health was 
never to recover. We find Scott repeatedly saying, 
afterwards, 'Ah, honest Hal Dundas! such things 
would not have been permitted in thy day.' 

Bookselling matters were beginning to assume 
rather a serious aspect with the firm of which Scott 
was a veiled partner. Even while the Lady of tJie 
Lake was careering on in its unrivalled success, the 
shelves of John Ballantyne & Co. were groaning 
under unsold thousands of Histories of Culdees (a 
very learned book by Dr. Jamieson, of the Die- 



VICISSITUDES—' WA VERLEY' LA UNCHED. 1 1 1 

tionary), Tixall Poetry, and Edinburgh Annual 
Registers, all printed at the instance and under the 
patronage of the most popular of poets and most 
reckless of publishers. 

In May 1813 things came to a crisis with the 
Ballantynes ; and Scott, dissolving partnership with 
them, opened up negotiations with Constable, who 
was again to be his publisher, on the condition of 
his taking off a great part of the unsaleable rubbish 
which had accumulated on the shelves of the un- 
fortunate firm. We shall recur to the subject of 
Scott's connection with the Ballantynes when we 
come to speak of his failure. Scarce had his good 
terms with Constable been resumed, than we find 
Scott offering to sell him the copyright of a poem, 
as yet unwritten, entitled The Nameless Glen. He 
was prompted to this by a desire to acquire a hilly 
tract behind Abbotsford, leading up to Cauldshields 
Loch. He gained his object by and by, although 
not till the Nameless Glen yielded to the Lord of 
the Lsles, the last of Scott's serious efforts in poetry. 

At this time the Prince Regent, in a very hand- 
some manner, gave Scott the offer of the Laureate- 
ship, vacant by the death of Pye. He declined it, 
however, 'unwilling/ he says, 'to incur the censure 
of engrossing the emolument attached to one of 
the few appointments which seems proper to be 



H2 WALTER SCOTT. 

filled by a man of literature who has no other views 
in life.' He bethought him of Southey, and gave 
Croker, then omnipotent with the Prince, the hint 
to offer the vacant office to him, which was done, 
and accepted ; Scott cordially congratulating him 
on his new dignity : i Long may you live, as Paddy 
says, to rule over us, and to redeem the crown of 
Spenser and Dryden to its pristine dignity. I 
know no man so welcome to Xeres sack as your- 
self, though many bards would make a better figure 
at drinking it.' 

He was at this time deep in an edition of Swift, 
after the fashion of his edition of Dryden, and spent 
the autumn months of 1813 in annotating its clos- 
ing volumes, and writing a long and very interest- 
ing life of the Dean. He was all the while harassed 
excessively by the affairs of the Ballantynes, and 
by their applications for his aid, alike in money and 
in literary work, and says in a postscript to one of 
his letters to James B. : ' For God's sake, treat me 
as a man, and not as a milch cow.' 

He began to mature in his own mind the plan of 
the Lord of the Isles, and wrote a portion of the 
first canto so much to his own satisfaction, that he 
renewed negotiations with Constable for the sale of 
the whole or part of its copyright. 

Looking, as he describes himself, one day into 



VICISSITUDES— 1 WA VERLE Y ' LA UNCHED. 1 1 3 



an old cabinet in search of some fishing tackle, 
he happened to light upon the old fragment of 

Wavcrlcy, which had been twice condemned by 
friends. He read it over again, thought it had 
been underrated, and resolved to continue the story. 
Two lessons from the facts connected with the 
early history of Waver ley may be taught us. First, 
let friends beware of their critical advices. Two 
of the best novels ever written had nearly been 
strangled in this way. Godwin gave his Caleb 

Williams to be read by a friend, who returned it, 

telling him 'that, if published, it would be the 

grave of his literary reputation.' And how it fared 

with Waverley we know. Probably hundreds of 

similar instances might be quoted from DTsraeli 

the elder, and other collectors of literary Ana. The 

second lesson is, that authors should never allow 

the severe criticisms of friends to drive them in 

rash disgust to burn or otherwise destroy the 

children of their brains. Let them put them under 

as many locks and keys as they like ; let them 

observe Horace's precept, ' Premat ad nonum 

annum,' as religiously as they please ; but let them 

spare their lives. Nay, let them keep them as 

carefully as the Mohammedans do the least scrap 

of paper they find, lest peradventure it contains 

the name of Mohammed or Allah. Depend on it, 

H 



H4 WALTER SCOTT. 

their day may come. Clergymen have often re- 
gretted that they did not preserve their early ser- 
mons, their students' discourses and all, however 
poor or juvenile. And for this there are two good 
reasons : first, such discourses, rewritten and cor- 
rected, may serve them in good stead amidst their 
pressing labours in after life ; and secondly, they 
would form a silent history of their intellectual 
progress. And so with literary men when they 
are wise. Godwin dared the risk, and his novel 
is now the principal pillar of his reputation. 
Scott serenely shut up the 'trash' of Wqverley ; 
and returning after many days, found it to be a 
priceless treasure. Wordsworth murmured to him- 
self, while writing down his every line, ' Scribo in 
aeternitatem.' If the preserved MSS. be worthless, 
all we need grudge is the room they occupy ! And 
if they be too bad ever to be printed, they at least 
are interesting to the author himself as landmarks 
of memory ; and one old leaf may tell us what 
heart histories! and, like Painting in Campbell's 
fine verses, 

' May give us back the dead, 
Even in the loveliest looks they wore.' 

1 8 14 maybe regarded as one of the most im- 
portant years in Scott's career. In it appeared his 
valuable edition of Swift. His life of that strange, 



VICISSITUDES— 1 WA VERLE Y > LA UNCHED. 1 1 5 

strong, and most unhappy man was able, but, like 
his Roderick, was eclipsed in the splendour of the 
review it obtained in the Edinburgh, — a review in 
which, in power of writing, Jeffrey surpassed him- 
self. We think, however, especially since a recent 
perusal of Swift's Journal to Stella, that the 
critic's view of Swift's morale is far too harsh and 
sweeping. Swift, with all his faults, which the 
public now knows passing well, and with all his 
madness, which, as in the case of poor Byron, none 
can know, was altogether a noble spirit, loved, and 
deserving to be loved, by the most gifted men and 
the most accomplished women of his time ; the idol, 
and most justly the idol, of the people of Ireland ; 
and in point of mental power and original genius, 
ranking with Edmund Burke and Daniel O'Connell, 
as the first three men that country has hitherto 
produced. * We shall never have such a Rector of 
Laracor ; ' no, nor ever such a creator of new worlds 
as the author of Gulliver s Travels, or such a daring 
humorist as the author of the Tale of a Tub. Be- 
sides writing some papers on chivalry and the drama 
for the supplement to the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 
Scott completed Waver ley, which appeared in July, 
and became instantly popular. And so soon as it 
was off his hands, he, as we shall see in the next 
chapter, proceeded on a sea voyage round Scotland. 



n6 WALTER SCOTT. 

Here let us linger for a moment on the fact of 
the publication of Waverley. With what emotion 
do we see the first welling out of one of the great 
rivers of the earth from its far desert or mountain 
spring ! Surely with deeper feeling may the lover 
of literature turn back to the day when there began 
a series of the finest creations of the human mind, 
combining lifelike reality with ideal beauty, full of 
simplicity, essentially Christian feeling, pathos and 
humanity, as well as of the highest eloquence, in- 
terest, and imagination, — a series which has bettered 
and blessed, as well as cheered and electrified, 
myriads and myriads more of mankind, and which, 
so far from having exhausted its artistic or beneficent 
power, is likely to increase in widespread influence 
as man advances and as ages roll on. And if Bruce 
was not blamed when, as he stood by the fountain 
whence he deemed the ' Great Father of Egypt's 
waters ' took his rise, he swelled that fountain by his 
tears, let our emotion now not be counted false 
or factitious, while standing beside a well whence 
streams of intellectual life, as bountiful and copious 
as the Nile, have flowed out to gladden, to instruct, 
and to elevate the human race. To effect this, let 
it be remembered, was the purpose, the pride, and 
the joy, and that he had effected it was ultimately 
the consolation, of our noble Scottish novelist. 




CHAPTER IX. 



AT SEA. 



|COTT was now culminating, if not exactly 
culminated. His prestige as a poet had, 
®?§=|^ indeed, in some measure declined ; but 
he had established his name, and had newly opened 
up a mine of virgin richness in Waverley. He was 
still young, only forty-three ; and there was as yet 
no indication of those complicated maladies which 
were destined first to shake, and then prematurely 
to destroy, one of the most robust constitutions, 
both in body and mind, that ever existed. Having 
propelled Waverley to the point of publication, he 
joyfully threw down the oar, and started on a long 
delightful excursion round the northern coast of 
Scotland. He writes, ere starting, to Morritt : ' I 
have accepted an invitation from the Commissioners 
of the Northern Lights (I don't mean the Edin- 
burgh reviewers, but the bona fide Commissioners for 
117 



uS WALTER SCOTT. 

the beacons) to accompany them upon a nautical 
tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious in 
continent and isle. The party are three gentlemen.' 
Those gentlemen were : Robert Hamilton, Sheriff 
of Lanarkshire ; Adam Duff, Sheriff of Forfarshire ; 
and William Erskine, Sheriff of Orkney and Shet- 
land ; besides a few others, with Mr. Stevenson as 
surveyor-viceroy over the Commissioners, — all more 
or less kindred spirits to Scott, and all pleasant, 
gentlemanly persons. 

There is something peculiarly exhilarating in a 
tour undertaken immediately after some strenuous 
and successful literary effort. The mind continues 
cheerfully to chew the cud of its recent felicitous 
endeavour, and is at the same time, having shaken 
off a load, free to welcome every new impression, 
and ready to feel that idleness is a duty as well 
as an exquisite delight. Scott, too, had so much 
enthusiasm for the scenery of the North, that he 
must have looked forward to this excursion as to a 
long gala-day. And so it proved. Surrounded by 
such sympathetic friends as William Erskine, every 
new morning lighting in some new spot of loveli- 
ness, grandeur, or romantic interest, their time and 
the vessel at the entire disposal of the party, Scott 
was thoroughly in his element, as his journal kept 
during the voyage proves. Then he was not 



AT SEA. 119 



altogether idle, since he was traversing scenes 
which he designed to turn to account at a future 
and not a very remote day, in the Lord of the Isles, 
a poem already begun, as well as afterwards in 
The Pirate. 

His Edinburgh friends saw him embark with 
pleasure more than regret, knowing that he would 
return with many spoils, as well as greatly enjoy 
himself during the journey. James Hogg, indeed, 
wrote a curious letter to Lord Byron on the sub- 
ject, which his Lordship thus quizzically notices 
in one of his epistles to Moore : ' Oh ! I have had 
the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick 
minstrel and shepherd. Scott, he says, is gone to 
the Orkneys in a gale of wind ; during which wind, 
he affirms, the said Scott, " he is sure, is not at his 
ease, to say the least of it." Lord ! Lord ! if these 
home-keeping minstrels had crossed your Atlantic 
or my Mediterranean, and tasted a little open 
boating in a white squall, or a gale in the " Gut," 
or the Bay of Biscay with no gale at all, how it 
would enliven and introduce them to a few of the 
sensations !' 

On the 29th of July 1 8 14, Scott started on his 
norland tour ; and he had scarcely cleared the 
Firth when the gale of wind did overtake him, 
and blew him on to Arbroath, where, after having 






120 WALTER SCOTT. 

been very sick at sea, he landed and spent some 
hours. He says : ' I visited the Abbey Church for 
the third time, — the first being, eheu ! the second 
with T. Thomson.' 'There is here an allusion, 
without doubt,' says Lockhart, 'to some happy 
day's excursion, when his first love was of the 
party.' Poor fellow ! he had not forgotten her 
yet ; and probably the next day, when with a fair 
wind he 'glided enchantingly ' along the coast of 
Kincardineshire, part of the enchantment resulted 
from the recollections which steeped that country 
in the joy of grief, and he would heave some of 
these delicious sighs, in which regret and pleasure 
are so beautifully blended, beyond all chymical 
solution. He saw Dunnottar Castle, with its mas- 
sive ruins, rise and sink on his left, and that also 
would waken old memories of joy and sorrow; 
he admired the view of the ' Granite City ' from 
the sea ; he admired Slaines Castle, standing 
sheer on its sea-beat rock, and circled by the 
everlasting clang of the wings of sea-birds ; he 
landed at the Bullars of Buchan, entered the 
dark cavern in which boils the caldron, and pro- 
bably thought, with Dr. Johnson, that there was 
no more suitable place for the confinement of a 
demon ; he passed the Reef of Rattray, after- 
wards commemorated in The Antiquary. Leav- 



AT SEA. 121 



ing Fraserburgh and the Moray Firth behind, he 
stretched across for Shetland, which at first, he 
says, seemed in meditatione fugcz from him and 
his companion the Sheriff of these isles, whom 
he urged to issue a warrant accordingly ; but the 
weather cleared up, and they made the harbour of 
Lerwick, — a town the situation of which, ' screened 
on all sides from the wind by hills of a gentle eleva- 
tion/ Scott admired exceedingly. He spent some 
time in studying the manners of this primitive 
country ; in exploring its savage scenery, its stony 
moorlands, its silent voes, its bold and beetling 
headlands, the Cradle of Noss, Sumburgh Head, 
etc. ; and in gleaning those picturesque particulars 
of character and superstition which he was after- 
wards to work into The Pirate. He visited then 
Orkney, touching with much interest on the Fair 
Isle in his way ; he examined with great care the 
Cathedral of St. Magnus; he saw, but did not 
climb, Whiteford Hill, to the north of Kirkwall, — 
whence perhaps it is, that, according to Orcadians, 
his description of the view from it in the novel is 
not so accurate or felicitous as his wont ; felt the 
eternal rocking of the Pentland Firth, Scotland's 
Bay of Biscay ; landed on the bold Hill of Hoy, 
with its three peaks rising sheer up from the wave, 
— its Dwarfle stone, — its mysterious Carbuncle, 



WALTER SCOTT. 



seen, it is said, on the breast of a mountain from 
below, but which, when the hill is climbed, can 
nowhere be found, — with the magnificent view of 
the Atlantic from its steep western side, — and 
with the midnight sun, if you can believe the 
natives, seen in summer from its summit ; visited 
Stromness, and those old grey spectres the 
Stones of Stennis, where in ancient days human 
victims were sacrificed to demon-gods, and where, 
in his own novel, a nobler sacrifice — that of 
Minna laying her misplaced love for Cleveland 
on the stormy altar — was consummated ; made 
Cape Wrath, the weather being in keeping with 
the stormy name; and entered the marvellous 
Cave of Smowe, with its rocky ledges, inky waters, 
dark cavern -sides sparkling with ten thousand 
times ten thousand stalactites, and slippery preci- 
pices hanging over bottomless gulfs, where it 
occurred to his imagination that a Water Kelpie, 
or some spirit lonelier and fiercer still, might find 
a fitting abode. Scott compares this cave to that 
of Montesinos in Don Quixote, describes it with 
great eloquence, and it had manifestly impressed 
his imagination very deeply. 

After rounding Cape Wrath, he passed, and 
very much admired, the wild mountains of Assynt 
in Ross-shire, as exhibiting the true Highland 



AT SEA. 123 



character — torn, serrated, and tempestuous in out- 
line. He went on shore at Coruisk in Skye, the 
darkest and most terrific of Scotland's lochs, liker 
the ' Last Lake of God's Wrath ' in Aird's magni- 
ficent Devil's Dream than an earthly scene, and 
which he was afterwards thus to describe : 



1 Rarely human eye has known 
A scene so stern as that dread lake, 

With its dark ledge of barren stone. 
Seems that primeval earthquake's sway 
Hath rent a strange and shattered way 

Through the rude bosom of the hill, 
And that each naked precipice, 
Sable ravine, and dark abyss, 

Tells of the outrage still. 
The wildest glen, but this, can show 
Some touch of Nature's genial glow ; 
On high Benmore green mosses grow, 
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe, 

And copse on Cruchan-Ben ; 
But here, above, around, below, 

On mountain or in glen, 
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, 
Nor aught of vegetative power, 

The weary eye may ken. 
For all is rocks at random thrown, 
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, 

As if were here denied 
The summer sun, the spring's sweet dew, 
That clothe with many a varied hue 

The bleakest mountain side.' 



Lord of the Isles, Canto in. 



124 WALTER SCOTT. 

He visited also MacAlister's Cave, and a cave 
in Egg ; revisited Iona and Staffa, and felt, like 
Johnson, his piety grow warmer amidst the ruins of 
the former, and his poetic genius touched with the 
deepest sense of the sublime in the Fingal's Cave 
of the latter. He had more congenial society 
when there, than it was our fortune to enjoy when 
visiting it. Conceive, in the heart of that cathe- 
dral of nature, that great Sanctuary of the Sea, 
a proposition made in a large boatful of people, 
for three cheers! It seemed to us as absurd as 
though one should ruff the thunder, or encore the 
earthquake. And yet it was carried, and perhaps 
not three in the company felt the profanation. 
At Torloisk, in Mull, he and his companions 
went on shore, and called on their old acquaint- 
ances the family of the Clephanes, in whom, and 
especially in the eldest daughter, afterwards Mar- 
chioness of Northampton, Scott took a great 
interest, giving her away in marriage, and watch- 
ing sedulously over her career, which was, we be- 
lieve, a chequeredly brilliant one. He and the 
rest of them felt it quite a luxury to find them- 
selves in the most refined female society, regaled 
by music and intellectual conversation, in the 
centre of these lonely and desolate Hebrides, 
* Placed far amidst the melancholy main ;' 



AT SEA. 125 



and it was with no little reluctance that they 
proceeded on their journey. They admired that 
noble prospect in the Sound of Mull, of the wall of 
mountains stretching between Ben Cruachan and 
Ben Nevis, as between two mighty watch-towers. 
They touched at the beautiful little town of Oban, 
and examined the ruins of Dunolly and Dun- 
staffnage Castles ; the latter commanding a grand 
view of Loch Etive, Ben Cruachan, and the sup- 
posed site of the ancient Caledonian city of Bere- 
genium. Thence they crossed over to the Giant's 
Causeway, watching the Paps of Jura, and listen- 
ing to the roar of the whirlpool of Corrievreckan 
on their way. When they reached Port Rush, 
Scott learned the news of the death of the 
Duchess of Buccleugh, a most admirable woman, 
and one of his warmest friends. And, in fine, he 
returned to Edinburgh, 'having enjoyed as much 
pleasure as in any six weeks of his life.' He had 
left, as we saw, on the 29th of July, and returned 
on the 9th of September — six weeks, to a day. 
This tour did not merely tend to strengthen his 
body and to exhilarate his mind, but had an 
important influence on his genius. It brought 
him in contact with scenery and manners of a 
new and very peculiar kind, and qualified him 
for writing his Lord of the Isles and The Pirate, 



126 WALTER SCOTT. 

which, if not the best of his works, are yet valu- 
able for their pictures of the wildest and most 
romantic Scottish scenes, and because one of 
them at least preserves the memory of interest- 
ing customs and characters which have now 
passed away.. During the journey he was often 
in a truly bardic state of inspiration, sometimes 
'pacing the deck rapidly, muttering to himself,' 
and at Loch Corriskin quite overwhelmed with 
his feelings as he roamed and gazed about by 
himself. 

On his return, to balance the sadness produced 
by the death of the good Duchess, he found 
that during his abence two editions of Waverley 
had gone off, — that the applause was universal, 
and that equally so was the curiosity about the 
name of the author. It was surmised by many 
that it was Scott — such acute judges as Jeffrey 
and Mat Lewis knew at a glance the fine Roman 
hand ; but the secret had been entrusted to only 
a few, including, besides the Ballantynes and 
Constable, Erskine and Morritt. He had scarcely 
reached home till he resumed the Lord of the Isles, 
which he meant as a trial of strength — in order to 
determine the question whether he should retire 
or not from the poetical arena. He wrote the last 
three cantos with fiery rapidity, finished them in 



AT SEA. 127 



December 18 14, and started for Abbotsford to 
'refresh the machine/ which might well be worn 
out with the labours of the year. These included 
the Life of Swift, Waver icy, the Lord of the Ls/es, 
two essays in the Encyclopaedia supplement, several 
annotated reprints of old treatises and memoirs, 
and a vast mass of correspondence, besides the 
journal kept during his six weeks' tour. Probably 
no man has ever, unless Scott at another time, 
compressed so much valuable literary work into 
twelve months before or since. And ere the bells 
rung in the year of Waterloo, he had commenced 
another and one of the very happiest efforts of his 
genius. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE FIRST THREE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 




have often envied those who lived 
while the great battles of Napoleon 
were succeeding each other ; heard 
safely on this side of the Channel, like succes- 
sive peals of distant thunder, by those basking 
in sunshine, — serving to enhance the sense of 
security, and to deepen the feeling of repose, 
and yet starting the sublimest emotions. How 
many eyes must have kindled, and hearts beat 
high, when the news of Austerlitz arrived ! And 
so have we envied those who had reached their 
full consciousness when the first Waverley Novels 
came forth in softer music, like sweet and lofty 
melodies succeeding each other from the harp of 
some great minstrel, who was himself unseen ! 
Ere we were capable of appreciating them, their 
prestige was in some measure lessened, and their 
128 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 129 

power in some measure gone. Guy Mannering or 
Old Mortality read fresh from the press ! what a 
luxury there is in the mere idea ; how much more 
in the reality ! 

The publication of Waverley, strange to say, 
had been preceded by considerable misgivings on 
the part of Constable and his house. To test 
its merits, and secure for it friends, proof-sheets 
of some of its chapters were put by James Bal- 
lantyne into the hands of Henry Mackenzie, Dr. 
Thomas Brown, Mrs. Hamilton (the authoress of 
The Cottagers of Glenburnie), and others, who 
were unanimous in its favour. Then Constable 
came to terms. When it appeared, these critics 
were of course ready to take its part openly, 
as they had done in private ; and the result 
was, after a little hesitation on the part of the 
public, triumphant success. One smiles at all 
this now, but it has not been uncommon in the 
history of popular works. With CJiilde Harold f 
for instance, a similar tentative process took 
place. With Vanity Fair, again, it was worse, 
as it had to go the round of the trade before 
it was accepted. It is quite possible that some 
real masterpieces have been strangled in the effort 
to be born, and that Mr. Home in his False 
Medium was right after all. 

I 



130 WALTER SCOTT. 

Waverlcy, the first, is also with many still the 
chief favourite among these fine productions. It 
is less finished in composition than some of them, 
and less probable in story. Its hero, as Scott says 
himself, is a ' sneaking piece of imbecility;' and 
the first five or six chapters are heavy and lumber- 
ing. But from the moment that he catches a 
glimpse of the ' Highlands of Perthshire, which at 
first had appeared a blue outline on the horizon, but 
now swelled into gigantic masses which frowned 
defiance on the more level country,' Scott goes on 
with unmitigated energy and unwearying interest. 
The manners are painted with a bold pencil. The 
style has an elastic movement, as if it trode on 
heather. The characters, which are fresh, varied, 
and admirably contrasted, are seen to vivid ad- 
vantage against the magnificent background of 
Highland scenery. Many of the separate passages 
are written with great elegance as well as power. 
Some of the incidents are of the most thrilling 
character ; and the scenes in Carlisle, for example, 
have never been surpassed in manly pathos. 

Meanwhile the Lord of the Lsles had appeared, 
and turned out a disappointment It read more 
like an imitation of Scott by an inferior hand, than 
a new work of the author. It had the rush with- 
out the force, the sound and fury but not the 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 131 

strength, the eloquence but not the inspiration, of 
his former poems. In only one or two passages, 
such as the pictures of Staffa and Loch Coriskin, 
did the old minstrel genius display itself; for, 
although Lockhart says the contrary, the public 
has never put the battle-piece of Bannockburn on 
the same level with that of Flodden : the former 
seems a faint pencil sketch, while the latter is 
painted in colours of fire. The comparative failure 
of this poem determined the author to devote 
himself to prose. 

Scott, we saw, had gone down to Abbotsford at 
Christmas 18 14, to 'refresh the machine.' And 
this he did by writing another novel in six weeks ! 
This was Guy Mannering. Let us, in passing, 
notice one rather curious circumstance. This 
novel was written in the depth of winter, and all 
the scenes in Guy Mannering occur in the winter 
season, which may partly explain their exceeding 
verisimilitude. 

Scott had previously to this become acquainted 
with Mr. Joseph Train, supervisor of Excise in 
Newton-Stewart. This ingenious and estimable 
man had been occupied in collecting materials for 
a history of Galloway, and had communicated to 
Scott a number of anecdotes concerning the Gal- 
loway gipsies, and a story of an astrologer who 



132 WALTER SCOTT. 

had called at a farm-house when the good-wife 
was in travail, and had spaed the child's fortune 
much as the novel describes it. On these hints, 
and on an imperfect recollection of a Durham 
ballad, containing the same tale at greater length, 
was Guy Mannering founded. Scott, the great 
lion, had several lion's providers ; but to none is 
the public more indebted than to the modest and 
worthy Joseph Train. 

This novel appeared on the 24th of February 
1815. We question if the feat implied in its rapid 
writing was ever equalled in the annals of improvi- 
sation. Byron's writing the Corsair in a fortnight 
is hardly equal to it. It is not merely at the size, 
but at the exquisite and varied quality, of a work 
written in so short a space, that we are called to 
wonder. It is to us at least the most delightful of 
Scott's novels. It reads like one sentence. The 
interest never flags for a moment, not even in 
Julia's letters, and, as Lockhart remarks, continues 
increasing till almost the last page. Critics have 
justly magnified the admirable ease, unity, and 
thorough, fusion of materials which distinguish 
Tarn Shunter; but to find the same qualities in a 
work a thousand times as large is proportionably 
more marvellous. Guy Mannering is by far the 
most Scott-like of Scott's tales, if it does not con- 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 133 

tain his very highest flights of genius. Its hearty 
homeliness, as exhibited in the Dandie Dinmont and 
Charlieshope scenes ; the wild flavour of romance 
and enthusiasm manifested in the astrological and 
gipsy departments of the book ; the passionate 
love for Scottish scenery, for rocks, woods, and 
waves ; and its sympathy with the old mirthful life 
of the Edinburgh lawyers, are all characteristic of 
the composite genius and broad, manifold nature 
of the author, who united intense interest in simple 
country manners, and enjoyment of every-day ex- 
istence, with feelings of the loftiest poetry. 

The reception of this novel was as rapturous as 
that of Waverley, perhaps more so ; although the 
Quarterly Review gave it a cold and captious 
notice, quite unworthy of the book, although quite 
worthy of a journal which was soon after to 
abuse and insult such writers as Shelley, Hazlitt, 
Lamb, and Keats, which had previously damned 
Wordsworth with faint praise, and ignored Cole- 
ridge entirely. The Edinburgh Review neither 
noticed Guy Mannering nor The Antiquary at the 
time of their publication, although this seems to 
have arisen from anything but indifference. Im- 
mediately after Guy Mannering appeared, Scott, 
his wife, and their eldest daughter, visited London. 
During this visit a long expected interview took 



134 WALTER SCOTT. 

place with Lord Byron, then in the morning splen- 
dour of a career soon to be clouded by heavy 
shadows, and to go down in premature night. 
Scott had, with a half-humorous, half-earnest in- 
terest, eagerly anticipated a meeting with his 
brother bard, telling James Ballantyne that they 
should accost each other when they encountered 
in the language of the farce of Tom Thumb. 

* Art thou the man whom men famed Grizzle call ? 
Art thou the still more famed Tom Thumb the small?' 

It was, we think, John Murray's drawing-room 
that first witnessed the meeting of these two poets. 
They became instantly intimate : their very diver- 
sity of character serving to weld their attachment 
Byron reposed his weary and racking self-conscious- 
ness on the wide and genial temperament of Scott 
as on a pillow ; and Scott was deeply moved with 
admiration for the fervent genius, and with sym- 
pathy for the unhappy disposition and unsettled 
opinions of Byron, of whose natural goodness of 
heart he formed a better opinion than the rest of 
the world. Scott told Byron he would alter, if he 
lived, his religious views, not by turning Methodist, 
but Catholic devotee. He thought him a Whig 
by accident, and a patrician by principle. Byron 
envied Scott's domestic felicity, and said he would 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 135 

give all fame, and the other advantages of his 
position, to be happy at home. They met often 
and exchanged gifts ; Scott conferring on Byron a 
beautiful Turkish dagger mounted with gold. Byron 
reciprocated by the present of a large vase of silver 
full of Grecian bones ; and they rallied each other 
about the gloomy and ominous nature of their 
mutual gifts. Byron, by the way, had a singular 
superstition about the ill omen connected with 
sharp-pointed objects as presents, and once re- 
turned a splendid pin given him by Lady Blessing- 
ton ; and it is almost a wonder he retained Scott's 
present, which might afterwards have seemed, like 
that fatal air-drawn dagger in Macbeth, to marshal 
the way to the disastrous catastrophe of the poet's 
separation from his wife and exile from his country, 
which occurred a few months afterwards. On 
Scott's return from Paris he had a parting inter- 
view with Byron at Long's, where the latter was as 
playful as a kitten, full of gaiety and good humour. 
So he seemed to Scott. But his namesake, Scott 
of Gala, who was present, says that Byron's pale 
face had a miserable expression, and that his con- 
versation was ' bitter, bitter,' strongly contrasting 
with that of the author of Guy Mannering. Speak- 
ing of some one at Waterloo who had lost his head 
by a cannon-ball, Byron remarked, ' No great loss ; 



136 WALTER SCOTT. 

it was never of much use to him.' Scott was just 
starting for the north, and he and Byron never 
met again. They continued, however, friends and 
occasional correspondents to the close of the un- 
happy poet's life. Scott watched with deep in- 
terest the fluctuating but splendid career of his 
iriend. He did him good service in the darkest 
hour of his life, by defending him in the Quarterly 
Review against the howl of the whole world ; and 
he anticipated much from his matured and sobered 
genius, and from his expedition to Greece. Scott 
is one of the few men of whom Byron speaks uni- 
formly well, and he was never weary of devouring 
his novels. It is singular that the two men of 
genius in the age most opposite in temperament 
to Scott, seem to have read him with the greatest 
avidity, and to have found in his works the best 
anodyne for their habitual gloom — Foster and 
Byron. In a future chapter we intend some more 
remarks on Scott's relation to Byron, and to his 
other eminent contemporaries. 

At this period, too, Scott dined twice with the 
Prince Regent, and narrowly escaped betraying 
his connection with the Scotch Novels in reply to 
a toast proposed by the Prince. When asked what 
he thought of the Prince's intellect, he said he 
could hardly judge of the mind of a man who intro- 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 137 

duced whatever subject he liked, talked of it as long 
as he liked, and dropped it whenever he liked. He 
thought highly of his manners, but was too acute a 
judge of human nature to be blind to that selfish 
heartlessness which a fine address decorated but 
could not disguise, although far too thorough a 
Tory to acknowledge it. He returned to Edin- 
burgh on the 22d of May. 

A month afterwards, the cannon of Waterloo 
startled every ear, and the Empire of the Hundred 
Days and its founder sunk with a shock which 
echoed through the world. While Robert Hall 
was saying in England that this event had put the 
clock of the world several degrees backward, our 
poet in Scotland was exulting and straining on the 
slip to visit the memorable field. In company 
with some friends and neighbours, he started for 
the Continent in July, having made a previous 
arrangement with Constable to describe his tour in 
a series of letters. He visited Brussels, Waterloo, 
Paris, and met a flattering reception from Welling- 
ton, Blucher, the Emperor Alexander, and other of 
the magnates of the earth, who were then dancing 
their giddy and guilty dance over what Shelley 
calls ' the last hopes of trampled France.' It was 
both here and on the Continent a time of joy, 
amounting to foolish and wicked delirium, in which 



133 WALTER SCOTT. 

Scott participated to a degree which seems to have 
weakened his powers ; for although his Paul's 
Letters to his Kinsfolk are graphic and interesting, 
his poem on Waterloo, which appeared in October, 
is not up to the mark. Scott at that period was 
too happy and triumphant a man to write well on 
the gloomier and sublimer aspects of war. The 
Spirit of the spot where 

' That red rain had made the harvest grow,' 

was to lead Byron to it next year, and to tell him 
to limn it in the everlasting chiaroscuro of Childe 
Harold. Scott returned to Abbotsford in Sep- 
tember, passing by and examining the old castles 
of Warwick and Kenilworth on his homeward 
way. Toward the close of the year he seems to 
have written a few pages of The Antiquary. 

Early in 1816 appeared Paul's Letters to his 
Kinsfolk, which was well but not rapturously re- 
ceived. Some other books on the subject, such as 
John Scott's Visit to Paris in 1815, had got the 
start of it. In May appeared The Antiquary. It 
sold rapidly, 6000 copies going off in six days ; 
but otherwise at first received a frigid welcome. 
Some even said the author's vein was manifestly 
exhausted ! It by and by, however, rose to, and 
has ever since kept, its level. It had not the high 



THE FIRST THREE NOVELS. 139 

historic character of Waverley, nor the unique yet 
varied charm of Guy Mamteri7ig; but in certain 
scenes and characters surpassed them both, nay, 
surpassed perhaps aught else the author ever wrote. 
The storm scene has seldom been equalled in power 
of language and thrilling interest of incident. It 
is curious, however, that he has marred an other- 
wise magnificent passage by the gross blunder of 
making the sun set in the German Ocean ; and 
more curious still, that not even the 'inevitable eye' 
of James Ballantyne, who looked over all the sheets 
of his tales, seems to have detected the oversight. 
Scott no doubt practised, in his descriptions, the art 
of composition, as painters call it ; but that art has 
its limits, and he might as well have introduced 
palms into Glencoe or bananas into Balquhidder, 
as describe the sun seen from the eastern coasts of 
Scotland sinking in the sea. Edie Ochiltree is one 
of the very happiest of its author's creations, in 
his combination of humour, kindliness, and auld- 
farrand sense, of pawkiness and poetry. But by 
far the most original and Shaksperean portions 
of the book are the scenes in the fisherman's cot- 
tage. The funeral is a masterpiece of pathos and 
picturesque effect ; and Elspeth Mucklebackit is 
a character resembling the style of Crabbe, but 
tinged with an imagination and shown in a weird 



140 WALTER SCOTT. 

light which that poet could not command. She is 
more fearful in the fell passions which lurk in 
the blood of old age, and inspire the lips of 
dotage, than the witches of Macbeth ; and, although 
with no supernaturalism about her, has a wild 
sublimity of thought and language more impres- 
sive still. And what exquisite humour and know- 
ledge of Scotch character in the Post Office scene, 
and in the story of 'Little Davie and his pony!' 
Altogether, The Antiquary is a mine of the purest 
and richest ore. It never disappoints, and it can 
never be exhausted. 



CHAPTER XL 



SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 




SCARCELY had The Antiquary left its 
n^ author's hands, than he planned the 
Tales of my Landlord, projected a series 
of Letters on the History of Scotland, which were 
never completed, and undertook to write the his- 
torical department of the Edinburgh Annual Regis- 
ter. Not willing that Constable should monopolize 
the publication of his novels, and for certain per- 
sonal reasons besides, Scott offered his new work 
to Murray and Blackwood. Discouraged a little 
by the coldness with which The A ntiquary was at 
first received, he once thought of bringing out the 
Tales of my Landlord without the words 'by the 
Author of Waverleyl although in this he changed 
his mind. William Blackwood, a man of rare 
penetration and rough vigour of speech, found fault 

with the closing part of the Black Dwarf, and even 
141 



142 WALTER SCOTT. 

suggested another way in which he thought the 
story should terminate. Scott got very indignant, 
and wrote, saying, ' Confound his impudence ! Tell 
him I belong to the Black Hussars of literature, 
who neither give nor take quarter.' This being out 
of Scott's usual measured style, had a proportion- 
ate effect, and told like thunder from a cloudless 
sky. The Tales appeared in December 1816, and 
the reception of the first of them showed the saga- 
cious bibliopole was right. The Black Dwarf was 
thought to begin delightfully, but to come to a 
lame and impotent conclusion. But Old Mortality, 
while bearing up its weaker brother, challenged a 
place instantly among Scott's proudest works. In 
the upper literary circles of London especially its 
reception was rapturous. The lion and the lamb, 
Gifford and Lord Holland, here lay down together. 
The latter distinguished nobleman sate up all night 
to read it ; ' nothing slept but his gout.' 

In Scotland, too, its power was felt, but speedily 
a storm arose against it for its treatment of the 
Covenanters; a storm swelled, if not originally 
stirred, by Dr. M'Crie, who, in a succession of able 
and eloquent papers in the Edinburgh Christian 
Instructor, then edited by Dr. Andrew Thomson of 
St. George's, assailed its statements, and went nigh 
to impugn the integrity of its author's motives. 



SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 143 

Scott at first resolved to remain silent ; but finding 
the impression strong and general, he wrote a reply 
to the Doctor in the somewhat equivocal form of a 
review of his own book in the Quarterly. M'Crie's 
work was published separately, ran through various 
editions, and was in 1846 re-issued under the patron- 
age of the Free Church General Assembly. We 
are disposed, looking back at the controversy, to 
think that the whole truth lay with neither of the 
contending parties ; and it is our wish to steer 
between the Charybdis of the Quarterly Review on 
the one side, and the Scylla of Dr. M'Crie on the 
other. We do not think that Scott was animated 
by any intense and virulent hatred against the 
Covenanters, as has been supposed. All Claver- 
house was not slumbering in his breast. He was a 
good hater, but incapable of deliberate and long- 
drawn malice. He had strong prejudices and pas- 
sions ; but neither against individuals nor parties 
can we conceive him cherishing slow, burning, 
vindictive resentment. He was attracted to the 
subject by its historic interest, and the opportunity 
it afforded him of exercising his favourite powers ; 
and he sate down to Old Mortality, as he did to 
his other novels, with little definite plan or purpose, 
and least of all with the intention of systematically 
blackening the memory of any party. But, on the 



144 WALTER SCOTT. 

other hand, it is certain that he had imbibed strong 
prejudices against the Covenanters, which, finding 
this channel open, ran too readily and recklessly 
along it. Scott had been brought up in the atmo- 
sphere partly of Edinburgh persiflage and scepti- 
cism, and partly of Border enthusiasm. The mix- 
ture of something of the Jeffrey and something of 
the Leyden element in him, with a dash besides of 
Highland superstition and Jacobite prejudice, ren- 
dered his own character a singular compound, and 
accounts for his unfitness fully to sympathize with 
the narrow, intense current of genuine earnestness 
which ran in the Presbyterian veins. Yet his en- 
thusiasm, though very different from that of the 
Covenanters (being more that of personal genius, 
class, and country, than of cattse), prevented him, 
along with his sense of justice, from treating them 
as mere subjects of scorn. His early Edinburgh 
training might have suggested unmitigated ridicule ; 
but his Border blood and poetic fire interposed, and 
compelled him to blend with it a certain respect 
and admiration. Hence his novel veers to and fro 
in feeling. Like Balaam, he comes to curse, and 
remains to bless. He is, like many men of genius, 
overruled by the power behind him. He awakens 
a demon, to whom he is compelled to be obedient. 
The fine instinct in him works out of his original 



SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 145 

atmosphere, casts it off as the sun a ring of clouds, 
and pours undesigned and therefore more precious 
light upon his subject. Moreover, the people of 
Scotland were not fair judges. Taught and trained 
in unbounded reverence for their forefathers, they 
were prepared to fasten on every word and syllable 
that told against them ; to find the blame out- 
rageous, and the praise null. They judged of the 
work from particular scenes, from what they thought 
its apparent purpose, and from the general result it 
produced. It was otherwise, on the whole, with the 
men of the South. Take Hazlitt as a specimen. 
This celebrated critic always speaks of Old Mor- 
tality as Scott's noblest work ; and, in verifying his 
criticism, uniformly appeals, not to the passages in 
which it caricatures, but to those in which it honours 
the Covenanters ; not to Mause Headrigg or Ha- 
bakkuk Mucklewrath, but to MacBriar preaching on 
the evening of Drumclog, or to Bessie MacLure in 
her disinterested heroism, now sitting in her red 
cloak by the wayside to warn a friend, and now 
exposing her life to danger to save a foe of the 
Covenanting cause. The book, in fact, had pro- 
duced in his mind, which on that subject was on 
the whole unprejudiced, an impression most favour- 
able to the Covenanters ; and he, we believe, is the 

type of southland thousands. 

K 



146 WALTER SCOTT. 

No doubt Scott has caricatured Covenanting 
manners. His picture of the coarseness and vul- 
garity of their lowest rank, of the cant of their 
ministers, of the fierceness, the rancour, and the 
bigotry of the Cameronians, of the selfishness, 
revenge, and cruelty, which blend with nobler 
elements in Burley, is undoubtedly overdrawn. 
Such a being as Mucklewrath never existed. Wild 
as some of the hillmen were, the wildest of them 
was sobriety personified compared to that mon- 
strous mixture of monomania, fanaticism, and fury. 
Old Mause is a more credible character, and is 
drawn with exquisite humour, but is also highly 
caricatured. MacBriar's conduct to Morton in the 
farmhouse, where they are about to put him to 
death, totally belies all the finer traits the novelist 
had given him before, and jars on the memory as 
Ave witness his heroic and sublime appearance in the 
trial scene. It is gratifying to see Poundtext made 
ridiculous as one of the indulged parsons of the 
period, those \ dumb dogs that could not bark,' 
keeping by their comfortable cribs, and munching 
their bones, while their brave brethren were chased 
like wolves upon the mountains. But Kettle- 
drummle is a clumsy caricature of the more rigid 
divine. All the wit connected with him, indeed, lies 
in his name. To Burley we have just alluded. 



SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 147 

His whole conduct in reference to Basil Olifant, to 
Edith Bellenden, and to Lord Evandale, is a libel 
alike on the Covenanters and on human nature. 
His killing of Sharpe at Magus Muir rises to an 
act of virtue when compared to the mean, cold- 
blooded, and long-winded atrocities which are 
gratuitously transferred to his character. But Sir 
Walter has sinned more deeply when he seeks to 
whitewash the persecutors, than when he blackens 
their victims. A good character aspersed soon 
rights itself; the dirt dries and disappears by a 
sure and swift process. A bad character defended 
and deified is often allowed without opposition to 
slip into the Pantheon. Men are more interested — 
and it says something for them — in defending the 
unjustly assailed than in pulling down the graven 
images of the guilty. Scott was too favourable to 
the cavalier character. Hence, in his picture of 
the persecutors, their every dragoon is half a hero ; 
Sergeant Bothwell a whole one, made so in spite 
of his admitted faults ; and Lord Evandale is 
something higher, a kind of link between the 
soldier and the seraph. Claverhouse is marred by 
gross inconsistency of conception, and is much 
more melodramatic than natural. He is not re- 
presented as a mere brutal butcher, nor yet as a 
perfect model of chivalry, but as an awkward com- 



148 WALTER SCOTT. 

pound of the fierce, careless warrior, and the refined 
and gallant knight. Few readers, we suspect, lay- 
down Old Mortality without a deeper detestation 
for the dancing bear, the educated tiger, the hand- 
some and accomplished murderer, which is all, in 
reality, the author makes him out to be. 

Yet if in some parts of this novel no one has 
caricatured the Covenanters more severely, none 
has brought out their picturesque aspects with 
such felicity and force. None but Scott could 
have described that scene in the inn, where Burley 
overthrows Bothwell ; or that profounder scene in 
the barn, where, on the old sleeping homicide's 
brow, the sweat-drops of a great agony are stand- 
ing like ' bubbles on the late disturbed stream/ as 
the tragedy of Magus Muir is being re-enacted in 
his soul ; or the skirmish of Drumclog ; or the 
tent -preaching which succeeded ; or the rout of 
Bothwell ; or the torture scene ; or the shaggy 
mountain solitude where Burley found his last 
desperate retreat, retiring from the company of 
men to that of devils, and who can match, in the 
fierce passions of his own breast, that 'hell of 
waters ' which is perpetually thundering around 
him. It sometimes happens that a caricature is 
more forcible, more life-like, more characteristic 
than a picture, especially if the countenance be 



SCOTT AND THE COVENANTERS. 149 

strongly marked. And so, probably, Scott has to 
many given an impression of the rough energy, the 
honesty, the daring, and the zeal of the Covenanters, 
which a tamer and more friendly portraiture could 
never have produced. These concessions of an 
enemy are confessedly more valuable than the ex 
parte statements of a friend. And still more, when 
an enemy is transcendently powerful, may his reluc- 
tant testimony, and the rude, careless grandeur of his 
touch, be more effectual than all the pleadings and 
reclamations of weaker advocates on the other side. 

A modified sentence is that, therefore, of wisdom. 
Few can think Old Mortality a strictly accurate or 
fair account of its age ; and few, on the other hand, 
would be disposed to erase it as a blot from the 
list of its author's works. It is a great partisan 
production, like the histories of Clarendon and 
Hume. Like them, it must always be read, but 
like them, too, should be read with great caution, 
and with the addition of not a few grains of salt. 

M'Crie's reply was also partisan. He would 
scarcely admit that the Covenanters committed an 
error, or, if he did yield an inch of ground, it was 
after a struggle like that of Morton and Burley 
when they kept Bothwell Brigg. He weakened 
the effect, too, by commencing with an under- 
estimate of the genius and works of his opponent, — 



150 WALTER SCOTT. 

in this case a signal error. He speaks, for instance, 
rather coldly of Guy Mannering, contemptuously 
of The Antiquary, and admits little literary merit 
in the book he was answering. Still his reply was 
vigorous and eloquent. He carried the war, too, 
with triumphant success into the enemy's camp ; 
and, by way of counterpoise to Scott's caricatures of 
Presbyterian preaching, quoted from Episcopalian 
divines of the same period specimens of bathos 
profounder still, of a more adventurous nonsense, of 
silliness and stupidity more unique, and of prejudice, 
bigotry, and blindness far more total and hopeless. 
Old Mortality was and yet was not answered. 
Where it grossly offended against truth and fact, 
its errors were now exposed ; but its powerful 
pictures of an enthusiasm which sometimes erred, 
and of a zeal and" energy which often mistook or 
missed their mark, remained intact, and are as 
immortal as the memory of the Covenant itself. 
The controversy on the subject did much good. 
It attracted attention to a topic and a time which 
had been allowed, in a great measure, to drop from 
the minds of men, and it poured a flood of light 
upon a field over which thick mists were beginning 
to gather, and yet which had been one of the 
noblest in the history of Scotland or of the Church 
of Christ. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONTINUED SUCCESS, WITH PRELIMINARY 
SHADOWS. 



^#|gjj|COTT, to a mind of gigantic power 
l^gj^vl united a tall and massive bodily frame- 
gv^t^l} work. When the first Napoleon met 
Goethe, he was prodigiously struck with his per- 
sonal appearance, — his majestic stature, stately 
gait, noble forehead, and great flashing eyes, — his 
whole aspect combining the fire of a poet with 
the dignity of a prince. The conqueror of Italy, 
the hero of Marengo, Lodi, and Austerlitz, felt 
himself small in the presence of the author of 
Wcrter and Faust, and exclaimed, 'Vous etes 
homme!' — You are a man. And although Scott 
had not the ideal physiognomy or the perfect 
figure of the great German, yet there was some- 
thing in his pile of forehead, the curtained light- 
ning of his eye, and the gruff sagacity of his lower 

151 



152 WALTER SCOTT. 

face, in which Napoleon, who was a great observer, 
and looked quite through the deeds of men, would 
have owned a true type of manhood, and granted 
that, if there were more splendour and subtlety 
in Goethe, there was in Scott quite as much 
strength, and a vast deal more simplicity. There 
was enough about him, at least, soul and body 
combined, to awaken (if the pagan poets are to 
be believed) in the gods the envy they feel at the 
superior mortals, and to start Apollonic shafts 
against a mark so conspicuous and so broad. It 
was on the body that the arrow was first to alight ; 
the mind was for more than another decade to be 
spared. 

He had made himself the easier prey by the 
incessant labours in which he had been occu- 
pied, alternating with many social engagements. 
Against the effects of all this, while in the country, 
air and exercise hardened him ; but it was other- 
wise in the town. And in the town, accordingly, 
the first blow fell. On the 5th March 1 8 17, at 
the close of a joyous party in Castle Street, he 
was seized with severe cramp in the stomach, 
and had to retire from the room, as he himself 
describes it, 'roaring like a bull-calf.' Such attacks 
yielded readily enough to medicine at first, but 
they recurred at intervals for more than two years, 



CONTINUED SUCCESS. 153 

and terribly shattered his constitution, although 
they served to reveal new resources in his mar- 
vellous genius. During the convalescence succeed- 
ing the first attack, he commenced his dramatic 
sketch of the Doom of Devorgoil, one of that set 
of third-rate poetic productions with which he 
continued to the close to amuse his leisure, and 
to tantalize rather than gratify the public. Some 
smaller things also dropped from his pen, such 
as a ' Farewell Address,' recited by John Kemble 
on leaving the Edinburgh stage, and some anec- 
dotes of the Scotch gipsies, containing the crude 
germ of Guy Mannering, inserted in Constables 
Magazine. William Laidlaw, his faithful ally, 
came to live at Kaeside, and to be his amanu- 
ensis. Scott began to project Rob Roy as the 
subject of his next novel, and sent in to Edinburgh 
for Constable and John Ballantyne to arrange the 
publication. The three dined joyously ; and Scott, 
though he had had a severe attack of cramp the 
day before, got into high spirits, and told Con- 
stable that he believed he would make a great hit 
in a Glasgow weaver, whom he would ravel up 
with Rob ; and he proceeded to extemporize a 
dialogue between the two, something like that 
which he afterwards described as taking place 
in the Tolbooth. Hence came in due time the 



1 54 WALTER SCO TT. 

immortal Bailie Nicol Jarvie. Ere commencing 
the tale, he paid a visit to Loch Lomond and 
Glasgow to study the scenery, and gather up 
the disjecta membra of the Bailie. 

At this time his friend Captain Fergusson, 
relieved by the peace from campaigning, took 
a house at Huntly Burn, in his vicinity. Scott 
had newly purchased much adjacent land there, 
and was now master of all the haunts of 'True 
Thomas' the Rhymer, and of the whole ground 
of the battle of Melrose. The dreary cramp, 
however, poisoned all his pleasures ; and we find 
him writing verses at this time as sweet and sad 
as ever came from the broken heart of Byron, 
or from the lyre which Shelley flung aside, to lie 
down on the Bay of Naples, seeking, 

' Like a tired child, 
To weep away this life of care.' 

STANZAS. 

: The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill, 
In Ettrick Vale, is sinking sweet, 
The westland wind is hush and still, 
The lake lies sleeping at my feet. 

1 Yet not the landscape to mine eye 

Bears those bright hues that once it bore, 
Though evening with her richest dye 
Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore. 



CONTINUED SUCCESS. 155 



1 With listless look along the plain 
I see Tweed's silver current glide, 
And coldly mark the holy fane 
Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. 

' The quiet lake, the balmy air, 

The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree 
Are they still such as once they were, 
Or is the dreary change in me ? 

' Alas ! the warped and broken board, 
How can it bear the painter's dye ? 
The harp of strained and tuneless chord, 
How to the minstrel's skill reply ? 

'• To aching eyes each landscape lowers, 
To feverish pulse each gale blows chill, 
And Araby's or Eden bowers 

Were barren as this moorland hill.' 



The house of Abbotsford was meanwhile in- 
creasing in size and splendour, and assuming its 
castellated form. It had become a resort for dis- 
tinguished strangers from every part of the world ; 
and this summer it was visited by such welcome 
guests as Washington Irving (who has gracefully 
recorded the particulars of his visit), Lady Byron, 
of whom Scott speaks highly, wondering why 
Byron could have failed to love her, and Sir 
David Wilkie. In the end of the year he com- 
pleted Rob Roy, which was written amidst many 
obstructions, springing from his severe attacks of 



156 WALTER SCOTT. 

cramp, and the dullifying effects of the opium he 
was obliged to use, and which gave him 

1 All the wild trash of sleep without the rest.' 

William Laidlaw took down the most of it from 
his lips. Sometimes he wrote at it himself. On 
one occasion James Ballantyne, calling on him for 
copy, found him sitting with a clean pen and a 
blank sheet before him. He expressed his sur- 
prise. ' Ay, ay, Jemmy/ said he, ' it is easy for 
you to tell me to get on ; but how the mischief can 
I make Rob Roy's wife speak with such a curmur- 
ring in my guts ?' 

It became very popular. In no novel has he 
been less happy in the construction of his plot, 
and, some think, in the adjustment to each other 
of the very different materials ; but in no novel 
has he surpassed the individual portraitures of 
character, or more beautifully described the 
scenery of his country. The Bailie is the general 
favourite ; but we think quite as much, in his way, 
of Andrew Fairservice, the ideal of a Scottish 
serving -man of the last century; nay, we are 
mistaken if he has not been met in this too, — 
impudent, greedy, conceited, pragmatical, and yet 
attached to his master, and overflowing with 
mother-wit. Nothing can be better than the 



CONTINUED SUCCESS. 157 

1 Dougal Cratur,' or than Rob Roy, especially 
among his own rocks, ' his foot on his native 
heath, and his name MacGregor.' Diana Vernon 
is the first of his heroines who has much character, 
and ranks in interest with the Rebeccas, Lucy 
Ashtons, Margaret Ramsays, and Clara Mowbrays 
who followed. His common run of heroines, as 
well as heroes, is singularly insipid. The most 
unpleasing characters are Rashleigh and Helen 
MacGregor ; but both are used to much, though 
melodramatic purpose. Among the descriptions, 
those of the preaching in the High Church of 
Glasgow, the midnight scene at the bridge there, 
and the Clachan of Aberfoyle on a harvest morn- 
ing, were exceedingly admired. 

Stimulated by its success, Scott began another 
and a higher effort of his genius. This was the 
Heart of JMidlotJiian, which appeared in June 1818. 
In Edinburgh, owing to the choice of the locale, 
its reception was enthusiastic beyond precedent. 
Some thirteen years ago we saw a MS. letter, in 
which Walter Savage Landor declared that if 
' Scott had written nothing else, it would have 
stamped him the most illustrious author of the 
age.' The power lay in the pathetic interest of 
the story (a story which the authoress of Adam 
Bede has imitated unsuccessfully) ; in the simpli- 



153 WALTER SCOTT. 

city of Jeanie Deans, — a simplicity which soars up 
by a quick yet natural gradation into sublime 
heroism, and returns as easily into simplicity 
again ; in the romantic interest attaching to the 
subordinate characters, especially to Madge Wild- 
fire, whom Coleridge pronounces the most original 
of all Scott's characters ; in the admirably drawn 
portrait of David Deans, who looks like an amende 
Iwnordble to the insulted Covenanters ; and in the 
purely historical part of the narrative, the de- 
scription of the fate of Porteous, which shows 
what an historian of Scotland Sir Walter might 
have been, had he sought the smiles of Clio at 
an earlier period of his life. The last volume, 
notwithstanding all the humour of Duncan Knock- 
dunder, should not have been written. It is 
hastily and carelessly composed. Roseneath is 
called an island again and again ; and the incident 
of the father falling by the hand of his illegiti- 
mate son is unpleasing. Effie, too, in her trans- 
formation into the fine lady, has left all that was 
interesting and natural behind her with her short- 
gown and her snood. 

Lockhart marks the completion of this novel 
as the climax of Scott's career. He was appa- 
rently realizing £10,000 a year by his writings ; 
his house was expanding into a castle ; a fine 



PRELIMINAR Y SHADOWS. 1 59 

family were growing up around him ; his popu- 
larity as a man and as a poet was unbounded ; 
and he was still sheltered by the shield of the 
Anonymous from some of the pains and penalties 
of authorship. We would rather fix it a little later, 
when his illness had been mastered, and Ivanhoe, 
his most brilliantly successful tale, was speedily 
succeeded by a baronetcy. At present there were 
dark spots on his sun. His constitution had re- 
ceived a dreadful shock ; and he felt, along with 
this, that hard toil was now essential to him. He 
was annoyed, too, although he bore this better 
than we believe any other man of his day could 
have done, by the intrusion of endless visitants on 
the precincts of Abbotsford, and by an incessant 
shower of MSS. and letters from every quarter under 
heaven. What might have been the case under 
the penny postage we can only conjecture. As it 
was, he was pressed beyond measure and strength^ 
although he seldom complained, and attended to 
every request. 

Lockhart at this time made the acquaintance 
of his future father-in-law. One of the very best 
bits in all his biography is where he describes 
himself dining with William Menzies, afterwards 
a supreme judge at the Cape. They were ca- 
rousing in a room looking northwards to Castle 



160 WALTER SCOTT. 

Street, when suddenly a shade came over Menzies' 
face, who was seated opposite Lockhart. 'Are 
you well enough ? ' — ' Yes ; at least when I change 
places with you I shall. But the fact is, there is 
a confounded hand in sight of me here, which 
has often bothered me before, and it won't let me 
fill my glass with right good-will. It never stops. 
Page after page it throws upon the pile of MS., 
and still it goes on.' — 'Poh !' said Lockhart, glanc- 
ing across and seeing the hand ; ' it is that of some 
stupid engrossing, everlasting clerk.' — ' No,' replied 
the other; 'it is that of Walter Scott!' And it 
was at that moment writing Waver ley ! 

This was in 1 8 14. In 1 818 Lockhart met Scott 
for the first time ; and we must refer our readers 
to his graphic description of his habits of un- 
wearied labour, — his private manners, so .manly yet 
bland ; his amusing symposia with his publishers 
on occasion of a new tale ; and his daily life in 
Abbotsford, where, while the caressed of princes, 
men of letters, and the nobility of the land, he 
was also the administrator of justice, and a com- 
mon good to . the whole country-side. ' I have 
neighbours beside me/ writes to us this year a 
gentleman residing near Melrose, 'old men who, 
when they are started, will talk for any length of 
time about the memory of their kind-hearted, un- 



PRELIMINARY SHADOWS. 161 

selfish master, — for I find this is the universal feel- 
ing ; and Sir Walter's large-hearted charity to the 
labouring poor about Darnick is the great feature 
in his character ; and it, independent of his 
works, causes his memory to be cherished round 
Abbotsford.' 

During all the close of 1818, and the beginning 
of 1 8 19, he continued to be assaulted by cramp, and 
was reduced to a skeleton. His hair became white 
as snow, his cheek faded, and the last days of the 
Last Minstrel seemed to have come. He laboured 
on, however, dictating to William Laidlaw and 
John Ballantyne (his dictation often interrupted by 
shouts of agony) The Bride of Lammermoor, The 
Legetid of Montrose, and the most of Ivanhoe. The 
first two of these appeared in June 18 19, and were 
read with, intenser interest that they were thought 
the last creations of his mind. One day Scott 
thought himself dying, summoned his family 
around him, bade them a pathetic and Christian 
farewell, expressing confidence in his Redeemer, 
turned then his face to the wall, but fell into a 
deep sleep, and from that hour began slowly to 
recover. His disease, which had resisted opiates, 
heated salt, etc., at last yielded to small doses, 
composed chiefly of calomel. It is doubtful, how- 
ever, if he ever became so strong as he had been. 



162 WALTER SCOTT. 

He was forty-six when first assailed by the malady, 
but, ere three years had elapsed, his constitution 
was at least a decade older. And, while yet the 
die of his life span doubtful, his aged mother ex- 
pired on the 24th of December. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CULMINATION OF FAME AND FORTUNE — 

1 IVANHOE ' AND BARONETCY. 




>N the same month that his mother died, 
and his own life hung trembling in the 
balance, Ivanhoe appeared. Never in the 
literary world had there been, perhaps, such a 
tumult of applause, particularly in England. 

4 Men met each other with erected look, 
The steps were higher that they took; 
Friends to congratulate their friends made haste, 
And long estranged foes saluted as they passed.' 

It seemed an event of national triumph when 
Ivanhoe rode with his vizor down into the lists, 
Rebecca by his side, and the Black Knight hover- 
ing on the skirts of the scene. As Dr. Johnson 
says of Gray's Odes, ' Criticism was lost in 
wonder.' But it was not, as Johnson would imply 

in reference to Gray, a wonder blended with doubt 
163 



1 64 WALTER SCOTT. 

and a spice of scorn, but wonder mixed with un- 
bounded delight, the very feeling of the Queen of 
Sheba : ' The half had not been told us. We were 
prepared for much, but never for aught like this.' 
We shall inquire as to the justice of these senti- 
ments in a little ; at present we record the 
unquestionable fact. The two tales which pre- 
ceded it had been welcomed warmly too. There 
is a fine romantic spirit hovering over the Legend 
of Montrose. It has a smell of heather, wears a 
coronet of mist, and a deep autumnal charm 
breathes in every page. Byron says of it, indeed 
justly, ' He don't make enough of Montrose.' That 
hero is dwindled beside three other characters, 
all admirable and all eccentric, — Sir Dugald Dal- 
getty, a mixture in equal proportions of trooper, 
pedant, and picaroon ; Ranald MacEagh, the grey- 
haired Son of the Mist, with his inimitable dying 
speech to his grandson ; and Allan MacAulay, 
parcel hero, parcel homicide, parcel maniac, and 
parcel poet. Annot Lyle, whose song comes over 
his dark soul like a ' sunbeam on a sullen sea,' is 
a sweet creation. And no episode in all Scott's 
novels surpasses in stirring adventure, blended with 
humour, Dalgetty's tour to Inveraray. 

Coleridge says that there is an exaggeration in 
the third series of the Tales of my Landlord and 



'IVANHOE* AND BARONETCY. 165 

in Ivankoe not to be found in any other of Scott's 
stories. Perhaps the cause of this lay partly in his 
disease, and partly in the enormous quantity of 
laudanum he was compelled, contrary to his taste 
and habits, to swallow to relieve it. Caleb Balder- 
stone, in some of his exhibitions, is precisely such 
an extravaganza as you might expect from a brain 
under a twofold morbific influence. Yet what 
must have been the strength of the mind which 
could in such an unfavourable state retain so much 
of its balance ? Scott, it will be remembered, 
when he recovered, had no recollection of having 
written these novels. Perhaps a morbid mood 
was the appropriate chiaroscuro through which to 
show us the dark tragedy of Lucy Ashton, — a 
tragedy which may be compared to those stern 
adumbrations of Fate contained in the Grecian 
plays, and the pathos of which is so heart-rending. 
There is no point of interest in all literature supe- 
rior to that in which, as Ravenswood bursts on 
the assembled marriage party, Lucy exclaims, 
1 He is come, he is come ;' and out of Shakspeare 
there are no dialogues superior to those of the 
two old witch women at the bridal and at the burial 
of the hapless victim. 

IvanJwe is certainly less natural, less probable, 
less life-like than his first novels. And so are The 



166 WALTER SCOTT. 

Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream less 
life-like and probable than the Julius Cczsar or 
King Henry the Fourth of Shakspeare. But they 
show more invention and more fancy. Much of 
the best matter in Waver ley, Guy Manncring, and 
Tlie Antiquary is borrowed from real incidents and 
characters, while in Ivanlioc he is compelled to 
make many of his materials. It introduces us into 
a world almost as distinctly new as that of The 
Tempest, full of characters for which there exists 
no real historical type ; knights breathing a more 
than mortal spirit of chivalry ; Saxons with a 
plusquam Saxonic boldness and independence ; 
banditti, ' minions of the moon ' not only in their 
clandestine calling, but in the poetic light which 
colours them ; and, above all, a Jewess, who, amidst 
the depths of her nation's degeneracy, exhibits 
more than the grandeur of Deborah, more than 
the tenderness of Rachel, and more than the love- 
liness of Solomon's spouse, and sings a song of 
Zion almost equal to those old strains which 
marched w T ith the ark, or trembled out a more sub- 
dued and solemn music of adoration, while Jahveh 
was thundering on Sinai's summit. Nowhere, too, 
does Scott display more of the master's power 
than in his management of these strange mate- 
rials : the adjustment of each to each, and all to all; 



l IVANHOE> AND BARONETCY. 167 

the happy cross lights of contrast which he throws 
in ever and anon, and the perfect oneness of the 
dream which they combine to form. There is 
another point, too, in which Ivanhoe is very re- 
markable. It has three climaxes, each rising above 
the other like mountain stairs, — the first at the 
close of the tournament, the second at the comple- 
tion of the storm of Torquilstone, and the third 
at the final deliverance of Rebecca. He gains a 
height on which inferior writers would have paused, 
and makes that the mere basis from which he 
takes a bolder and yet a bolder step. Thrice in the 
course of the novel is that exquisite pang, which 
the close of a good story always inflicts, felt in our 
bosoms, and each pang is more exquisite and 
more intense than that which went before. And 
what can be imagined superior to the parting inter- 
view between Rowena and Rebecca? It reads 
almost like the book of Ruth. 

Scott's eldest son Walter had ere this joined the 
4th Regiment of Hussars. In the beginning of 1820 
he published some papers entitled The Visionary, in 
order to calm down the political agitation of the 
times, and bolster up the reign of Toryism, then 
beginning to totter to its fall. Like Professor 
Wilson, Scott's power always deserted him when 
he wrote on political subjects. Wilson foamed and 



168 WALTER SCOTT. 

screamed like a maniac ; Scott maundered like an 
old doting woman. 

In March appeared The Monastery. It was com- 
monly thought the first failure in the splendid 
series ; yet it succeeded the Black Dwarf, which 
assuredly was much worse. It cannot be denied, 
in reference to the Waverley Novels, that they are 
not only, like most works, unequal, but that from 
the date of the Black Dwarf there ever and anon 
appears in them a layer of utterly inferior and un- 
worthy matter. Previous to Scott's acknowledg- 
ment of the sole authorship, many accounted for 
this on the supposition of another and inferior 
hand being sometimes employed on the work ; and 
certainly this surmise was rendered probable at the 
time by the immense contrast between the two 
stories in the first Tales of my Landlord, in one of 
which the author drivels like James Hogg in his 
worst novels, while in the other he writes like a 
man inspired. We have sometimes thought that 
the disease, softening of the brain, of which he 
ultimately died, began to affect him, although fit- 
fully, at an earlier period than is usually thought. 

With all its faults, we love The Monastery, — 
partly, indeed, because it was the first of the series 
we read. The White Lady is a failure, — rather, how- 
ever, as Scott himself maintains, in execution than 



'IVANHOE* AND BARONETCY. 169 

in design. The witching scenes connected with 
her are, for the most part, exceedingly poor. She 
is far inferior to Undine, that fairy of the waters ; 
yet we love to haunt her well, in the depths of 
Corrinanshian, — love to see her holly-tree 

1 Startling the bewildered hind, 
Who sees it wave without a wind ;' 

and love to hear her soft, sad voice from the sky 
exclaiming, — 

' The breeze that brought me hither now must sweep Egyptian 
ground ; 
The fleecy cloud on which I ride for Araby is bound. 
The fleecy cloud is drifting by, the breeze sighs for my stay, 
And I must sail a thousand miles before the close of day.' 

Piercy Shaften is a fool, but a generous, brave, 
and warm-hearted fool ; and Mysie Happer is one 
of the most interesting of all Scott's female charac- 
ters, — incomparably more so than Mary Avenel, 
who is pale and cold as the secondary cloud which 
rises from a cataract, and seems the spirit of spray. 
The scenes in Avenel Castle are written with power 
and pathos. Murray and Morton are painted to the 
life. And when the Last Minstrel hears, like Job's 
horse, the sound of the trumpet and the shouting, 
he becomes all himself; and the death of Julian 
Avenel, the cry from his paramour, ' Christie of 



170 WALTER SCOTT. 

the Clinthill, Rowley, Hutcheon, ye were con- 
stant at the feast, but ye fled from him at the fray, 
false villains that ye are ! ' and Christie's exclama- 
tion ere he dies, ' Not I, by heaven ! ' are worthy 
of him who described Brian De Bois Guilbert in his 
last and noblest moments, dying in his steel harness 
full knightly. Yet The Monastery WAS a failure ; 
but this was little more regarded than is one stumble 
in the w r alk of a stately and stalwart man. While 
the public were reading it with mingled feelings, 
swallowing it eagerly, but disputing about the 
taste it left behind, Scott was off to London, to 
receive an honour which, cheap as it now appears 
to the admirers of his genius, was very gratifying 
at the time to him and to his family, — a baronetcy. 
This should have been conferred in the spring of 
the previous year, but for his illness ; and at Christ- 
mas, had it not been for family afflictions. He had 
scarcely reached town till Sir Thomas Lawrence 
called on, and got him to sit as a figure in a great 
gallery of distinguished men for Windsor Castle ; 
and the painter has, according to Lockhart, * fixed 
with admirable skill one of the loftiest expressions 
of Scott's face at the proudest period of his life.' 
Lawrence said afterwards, that, in his judgment, 
the two greatest men he ever drew were the Duke 
of Wellington and Scott; and, curiously, both 



l IVANHOE> AND BARONETCY. 171 

selected the same hour for sitting, — seven in the 
morning. The only way to catch Scott's best and 
highest look was to get him to repeat a piece of 
poetry, and then the fire of the Makkar looked 
out from his eye in almost stormy grandeur. To 
Chantrey, too, he sat for a bust, and on this 
occasion made the personal acquaintance of Allan 
Cunningham. This gifted and admirable man had 
long admired Scott with all the enthusiasm of a 
self-taught genius. He describes himself, in a letter 
to Hogg, reading The Lay of the Last Minstrel 
along with the shepherd on Queensberry Hill 
' under the sunny rain ;' and he had on one occa- 
sion, when a stone-mason in Nithsdale, walked all 
the way to Edinburgh simply to see the author of 
Marmion passing along the street. Scott heartily 
responded, and spoke of him afterwards as Honest 
Allan, and being a credit to Caledonia. 

This was altogether a happy as well as a proud 
and cclatant visit. Scott met lords many, including 
Lords Melville and Huntly ; some gifted and noble 
women, especially Lady Huntly, who ' sang Scotch 
tunes like a Highland angel,' and whose variations 
of ' Kenmure's on and awa ' were, he told her, 
enough to raise a whole country-side ; saw the 
Duke of York, and others of the great of the hour. 
But he had far more true pleasure when going 



172 WALTER SCOTT. 

out and spending a Sabbath-day quietly with 
Joanna Baillie and John Richardson at Hampstead. 
Nor did he allow ' champagne and plovers' eggs,' 
the blandishments of lords, ladies, or literati, to 
hinder him from using his influence, while in 
London, in behalf of his friend John Wilson, who 
was then, against much opposition, canvassing the 
Edinburgh Town Council for the Moral Philosophy 
chair. In a letter to Lockhart on this subject, he 
says, ' You are aware that the only point of excep- 
tion to Wilson may be that, with the fire of genius, 
he has possessed some of its eccentricities ; but did 
he ever approach to those of Henry Brougham, 
who is the god of Whiggish idolatry ? If the high 
and rare qualities with which he is invested are to 
be thrown aside as useless, because they may be 
clouded by a few grains of dust which he can blow 
aside at pleasure, it is less a punishment on Mr. 
Wilson than on the country.' Wilson, every one 
knows, got the chair, did not become a model 
Metaphysical or Moral Philosophy professor either, 
but filled his class-room with the strong breath 
of genius, and left such impressions on the minds 
of the successive students, who for thirty-one years 
attended his prelections, as more than justified 
Scott's canvassing eagerness and prognosticating 
foresight. 



'IVANHOE* AND BARONETCY. 173 

When the King in person conferred on Scott the 
baronetcy, he said, as the poet kissed his hand, ' I 
shall always reflect with pleasure on Sir Walter 
Scott's having been the first creation of my reign.' 
The Gazette announcing this event was dated the 
30th March, and published on the 2d of April ; 
and soon afterwards his native land again welcomed 
back her most distinguished son as SlR Walter 
Scott. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



SCOTT AT HOME, AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 




E came home a little earlier, that he might 
be present at a marriage, — the marriage 
of his eldest daughter Sophia to J. G. 
Lockhart. This took place on the 29th of April, 
Scott having arranged that it should not be deferred 
to the unlucky month of May. He liked to cherish 
all these old superstitions, which, though only vene- 
rable cobwebs, he treated as if they were antique 
tapestry. We have already characterized the bride 
in this fair marriage. The bridegroom was of a 
more composite character. Possessed of a robust 
intellect, powerful though limited imagination, keen 
and savage sarcasm, and of a varied and catholic 
culture, he seemed destined to take the very highest 
place in the world of letters. But there was a cross- 
grained element in his nature. He was rather strong 
than genial ; his humour often coarse and poisoned 

with personalities ; and he now appears in the eye 
174 



A T HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 175 

of the public a ' secondary Scottish novelist,' a 
translator, not a poet, and an admirable biographer, 
as his Lives of Scott, Burns, and Napoleon prove. 
With culture about equal, and a more masculine 
style of thought and language, he has not nearly 
now such acceptance as Professor Wilson with the 
Scottish people. What a different destiny might 
have been expected for the man who in youth could 
write Valerius! 

As it is, his immortality now rests almost entirely 
on his connection with Sir Walter Scott. His pic- 
tures of the great novelist's private life and habits, 
— his companions, amusements, and methods of 
study, — combine breadth and minute accuracy, are 
written with a rare vigour and felicity of style, and 
for them all after time must be grateful. Lockhart 
has done for Castle Street and Abbotsford what 
Boswell did for Bolt Court ; for Scott what Boswell 
did for Johnson ; and yet has not much compro- 
mised his dignity, or at all sacrificed his individu- 
ality. And if he has not recorded so many pithy 
sayings and bon mots of his hero, he has given a 
general view of his everyday life quite as vivid ; 
and, while bringing him out as the centre of the 
literary scene, has not omitted faithfully and fully 
to depict the surrounding and subordinate figures, 
some of whom were among the first men of their 



176 WALTER SCOTT. 

time. Well might he say to William Allan, when 
standing before the porch of Abbotsford house after 
breakfast, and when a brilliant party were about to 
start on a day's coursing match, ' A faithful sketch 
of what you at this moment see, would be more 
interesting a hundred years hence than the grandest 
so-called historical picture that you will ever ex- 
hibit in Somerset House ;' and Allan might well 
grant that he was right. 

In defect of Allan's sketch, we have Lockhart's 
own most masterly picture of Sir Humphrey Davy 
in his fisherman's costume, — a brown hat with 
flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line and 
innumerable fly-hooks, jack-boots worthy of a 
Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled 
with the blood of salmon ; Dr. Wollaston in black, 
with his noble and dignified countenance, like a 
sporting archbishop ; Mackenzie, the Man of Feel- 
ing, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, with a white 
hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green 
jacket, long brown leathern gaiters, and a dog- 
whistle round his neck; and Sir Walter himself, 
mounted on Sybil Grey, the giant Maida gam- 
bolling about and barking for joy, and Scott's pet, 
a little black pig, frisking around the pony, and 
evidently ambitious to join the party, while her 
master exclaims, — 



A T HOME AND AG A IN IN L OND ON. 177 

' What will I do gin my hoggie die, 
My joy, my pride, my hoggie ; 
My only beast, 1 had na mae, 
And vow but I was vogie ! ' 

Davy especially enjoyed Scott He had much 
of the poet in his own composition, and has written 
some splendid lines on the doctrine of Spinoza. 
Scott and he served to draw each other out, partly 
by their points of resemblance and partly of con- 
trast, and the effects were electrical. Both talked 
their best, Scott becoming less anecdotical and more 
impassioned ; Davy impregnating his science with 
imagination till it shone and burned ; and William 
Laidlaw standing by, the happiest of the sons of 
men, and whispering to Lockhart, with his eye 
cocked like a bird's, ' Gude preserve us, this is a 
very superior occasion. Eh, sirs ! I wonder if Shak- 
speare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk ither up ! ' 

These were gala days, and nodes coenceque Deiim. 

But there were others which, though homelier, 

were quite as happy. Such, each 28th of October, 

young Walter's birthday, was the Abbotsford 

Hunt, with all its glee and glory, which made 

farmers wish that they could sleep all the year 

through till it came again ; ' for there's only ae 

thing in this warld worth living for, and that's the 

Abbotsford Hunt !' And such was his annual bout 

M 



178 WALTER SCOTT. 

of salmon-fishing, closing sometimes with such a 
spearing of the water as is described in Guy Man- 
nering, — the Sherra himself often appearing on the 
boat, wielding, if not a spear, a torch, the more 
poetical of the two, and seeming a premature morn 
risen on the midnight. Let us not forget the regale 
on the newly -caught prey, boiled or grilled or 
roasted, with a great old ash bending over the 
heads of the party, the Tweed murmuring like a 
happy bee beside, and the harvest moon rising on 
the scene ere it was closed, and adding to it her 
weird light and nameless ecstasy. We fancy Scott 
exclaiming, ' Burke might be a great man, but he 
was absurdly wrong when he said the age of 
chivalry and romance is gone : it is here. Bear 
witness, that rejoicing river, those grey hills, that 
lovely moon, and those hearts as young and blithe 
as can be found in " Christendie ! " ' 

In September 1820 appeared The Abbot, the 
sequel to The Monastery, and usually thought the 
stronger of the two. Appearing as it did at the 
time when the miserable business of George IV. 
and his Queen was agitating the country, many 
thought that there must be some allusion, open or 
covert, in the novel to the times. As Scott's 
animus in favour of the King was well known, and 
as the tale might be construed into an apology for 



A T HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 179 



the Queen, some wiseacres (including, as Moore's 
Memoirs inform us, one or two of the Holland 
House circle) came to the conclusion that Green- 
field, a man of accomplishments, who had been 
forced to flee from Edinburgh on account of a 
frightful scandal, and was in hiding somewhere on 
the other side of the Border, was its author, as 
well as of two or three of the other novels. This 
was a mere falsehood, although it continued long 
afterwards to be repeated in periodicals, one writer 
in the Eclectic Review renewing it almost every 
year ; and the resemblance on which it principally 
rested, of Mary's case to Caroline's, was quite 
arbitrary and absurd. A ' Queen/ however, this 
autumn was triumphant in fiction as well as in 
reality. Caroline was acquitted ; and Mary, in 
The Abbot, was welcomed with universal applause. 
The beginning of that novel, though full of a cer- 
tain melancholy beauty, is rather tedious. But 
the scenes in Edinburgh, when Roland Graeme 
enters it, are spirited ; and those in Lochleven, 
circling round the Queen, are equal to anything in 
Scott's historical fictions for grace, vraisemblance, 
and romantic interest. The battle at Langside, 
and Mary's retreat to England, are most tenderly 
pictured. Among the characters, Roland and Ca- 
therine, the lovers, are lively and natural ; Dryfes- 



I So WALTER SCOTT. 

dale, a gloomy spirit, starts from the canvas ; Queen 

Mary is every inch a queen ; and what pathos in 

George of Douglas, and power and character in 

his words, when the Queen fancies herself on the 

back of Rosabelle, her favourite palfrey : ' Mary 

needed Rosabelle, and Rosabelle is here !' Most 

touching, too, the character of the noble abbot, 

Edward Glendinning, to whom, devoted to duty 

as he is in the watches of the night, memories 

of his happier period of life at Glendearg, and 

the pale face of Mary Avenel, still unutterably 

beloved, are often recurring ; and the conversation 

between the Queen, Lords Ruthven and Lindsay of 

the Byres, is one of the most delicately beautiful 

and profoundly heart-searching in all the Novels. 

Scott knew he had recovered his ground, and wrote 

to Lockhart (on a slip of paper inserted in the first 

volume) two lines from a forgotten jeu d'esprit 

entitled ' Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress/ 

t Up he rose in a funk, lapped a toothful of brandy, 
And to it again ! any odds upon Sandy. 5 

Scott had picked up some of the materials of 
The Abbot in the course of the annual visits he 
had been in the habit of paying to Blair Adam, in 
the neighbourhood of Kinross, where the Right 
Honourable William Adam fixed his summer 
residence. In midsummer 1816 he was visited 



A 7 HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 181 

there by some of his friends, William Clark, Adam 
Fergusson, and Scott. They enjoyed each other 
so much that they determined to hold a similar 
meeting every year at the same season and at the 
same place, along with a few additions to the party. 
Thus was formed the Blair Adam Club, where 
Scott never failed to attend from 1816 to 1831. 
To it, besides those mentioned before, and some 
near relations of Chief Commissioner Adam, there 
belonged Thomson of Duddingston, his brother the 
Registrar-General, and Sir Samuel Shepherd, the 
Chief Baron of Exchequer. They usually met on 
a Friday, spent the Saturday on a visit to some 
scene of historical or picturesque interest in the 
neighbourhood, on Sunday attended duly and 
devoutly the parish church of Cleish, devoted 
Monday to another excursion, and returned to 
Edinburgh on Tuesday in time for the Courts. In 
this way they visited St. Andrews, Magus Muir, 
Castle Campbell, Falkland, and Dunfermline ; and 
what a picnic in Scott's company would be, we may 
gather from its picture on the written page of The 
Antiquary. On one occasion the Chief Commis- 
sioner and Scott were waiting for the boat at the 
Hawes Inn near Queensferry. The seals were sport- 
ing in the glassy bay, and Sir Walter exclaimed, 
' What fine fellows they are ! I have the greatest 



i32 WALTER SCOTT. 

respect for them. I would as soon kill a man as a 
Plwca! The scene on the beach in the novel 
instantly flashed in the Chief Commissioner's mind, 
and he saw the author of Waverley and the father 
of Jonathan Oldbuck standing by his side. In his 
Abbot he had mentioned the Kiery Craggs, a 
place of romantic scenery enclosed in the grounds 
of Blair Adam, and the name of which was not 
generally known. Soon after its publication the 
party had met on the top of this rocky ridge, when 
the Chief Baron Shepherd, looking Scott full in 
the face, and stamping his staff on the ground, 
exclaimed, ' Now, Sir Walter, I think we be on the 
top of the Kiery Craggs ?' Sir Walter said nothing, 
but looked down as if conscious he was ' found, 
found,' like his own Goblin Page. Constable, since 
Mary had fared so well, insisted, on his bringing 
her great rival Elizabeth on the stage in his next 
tale ; and, with his usual sagacity, he proposed as 
subject 'The Armada.' What a pity Scott had 
not taken the hint ! How the mere words, ' The 
Armada, by the author of Ivanhoe] would at that 
time have startled the public imagination ! It 
may be said that he could not bear to write up to 
a title, and that he might have failed. One is 
reminded of Sir Thomas Vaux's whisper to Richard 
Cceur de Lion when he was about to cut the mass 



A T HOME AND AGAIN IN LONDON. 183 

of steel with his two-handed sword in the company 
of Saladin, ' Take care ; your majesty is not fully 
recovered.' — 'Fool!' replied the monarch; 'do 
you think I could fail in his presence ?' So it is 
difficult to conceive of Scott failing in the presence 
of a subject so great as the Armada, — a subject 
swelled, as it were, by so many elements of 
grandeur — danger, battle, shipwreck, the war of 
elements, patriotic passion, defiance, defeat, and 
glorious deliverance. Elizabeth's medal ran, ' HE 
blew with His wind, and they were scattered ;' and 
that would have been a sublime motto, and have 
ministered inspiration to the great novelist, in the 
wind of whose awakened spirit the whole mar- 
vellous story would have begun to live and move, 
to breathe and burn again, not an atom of the 
life lost, nor quenched one spark of the heaven- 
kindled fire ! Scott, however, chose KeniLworth 
instead ; and in January 1821 appeared that most 
interesting, varied, pathetic, and sparkling tale. 
In the word ' sparkling ' we allude to its dialogue, 
which equals that of the Elizabethan drama in wit 
and elastic brilliance. Queen Elizabeth, if not a 
portrait true to ker t is true to Scott's idea of her, 
and is executed with wonderful power and skill. 
Amy Robsart is one of his most natural and 
woman-like females. Scott calls some of his other 



1 84 WALTER SCOTT. 

heroines lovely, but he makes her so, both in body 
and mind. Dickie Sludge escapes from criticism 
as he does from pursuit, by his dexterity and 
mother-wit. And Lambourne, Varney, and Alasco 
constitute a famous cluster of villains, — three dark 
stars, with their different shades of gloom most 
accurately discriminated. The interest, too, of the 
story never flags, and becomes near the close un- 
endurably thrilling. Immediately after the pub- 
lication of this novel Scott hied to London on 
legal business ; heard while there of the birth of 
his grandchild, John Hugh Lockhart, to whom he 
afterwards addressed his Tales of a Grandfatlier ; 
and was consulted about the establishment of a 
Society of Literature, — a project which bore fruit by 
and by. In June died his old and most devoted 
friend, John Ballantyne, after a long and lingering 
illness. While committing poor Rigdum Funni- 
dos' remains to the Calton Burying-ground, the 
heavens, which had been dark, cleared up, and the 
mid-day sun shone forth. Scott glanced his eye 
along the gleaming Calton Hill, and then, turning 
to the grave, said in a whisper to Lockhart, ' I feel 
as if there would be less sunshine for me from this 
day forth.' * Garrick's death eclipsed the gaiety of 
nations.' Ballantyne's, in shading that of Scott, 
shaded that of Scotland and of the world. 



A T HOME AND A GAIN IN LONDON. 1 3 



On the 19th of July we find him again in Lon- 
don, present at what one calls the 'contemptible 
mummery of a coronation/ never so contemptible 
in the eyes of the public as when George IV. was 
the king crowned, although to Scott it seemed a 
personal triumph. He met, indeed, there with what 
was equivalent. Returning home on foot after the 
banquet, he got locked in the crowd about three 
in the morning, and his friend with him became 
apprehensive of some accident to his lame limb. 
Scott, observing an open space in the middle of the 
street, asked a sergeant of the Scots Greys on guard 
to allow him to pass. He replied it was impossible, 
his orders were strict. At this moment a wild wave 
of the multitude came rolling behind, and his com- 
panion exclaimed, ' Sir Walter Scott, take care ! ' The 
soldier cried out, ' What ! Sir Walter Scott ! he shall 
pass at all events. Make room, men, for our illus- 
trious countryman.' And amidst shouts of 'Walter 
Scott, God bless him !' he gained the place of safety. 

During this visit he called again on Allan Cun- 
ningham, and talked with him about Crechope 
Linn, where he had been when a boy, and other 
Scottish matters; and in returning home he visited 
Stratford-on-Avon, and wrote on the wall of the 
room a name only second among British authors 
to that of its original tenant. 




CHAPTER XV. 

SCOTT'S RELATION TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES, 
GOETHE, BYRON, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, 
AND THE REST. 




O literary man in Britain since Johnson, 

and before him, Pope, and before him, 

Dryden, had such a good title to the 

name autocrat as Sir Walter Scott. But while 

Dryden and Pope were tyrants, and active tyrants 

too, constantly warring with their rebel subjects, 

writing MacFlecknoes and Dunciads ; and Johnson, 

a lazy despot, who would only take the trouble to 

growl at those who would not kiss his ferula for 

a sceptre ; Scott was a wise, calm, and moderate 

monarch. He had few who did not bow to his 

supremacy, none who hated his rule, none who 

envied him, and none whom he hated or envied. 

Hazlitt abhorred his politics, bitterly assailed 

them, misunderstood the man, and depreciated 
18G 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 187 

the Poet; but Hazlitt admired the novelist and 
the novels to enthusiasm. Byron, when most 
powerful as a writer, on the publication, namely, 
of his 4th Canto of Childe Harold, was most un- 
popular as a man ; and when he produced his Don 
Juan, he lost his poetical prestige too. It was, he 
says, 

1 His Leipsic, Fahero, 
His Moscow and his Waterloo was Cain;' 

and it was not merely the satiated voluptuary but 
the dethroned king of song who took refuge in 
Greece. But such was the love felt universally for 
Scott, that, as in his heyday of power, all rejoiced 
in his great light, when it sank prematurely, every- 
body mourned as at a personal calamity, and 
tried to catch warmth even from the feeble beams 
of his setting sun. Some authors, while generally 
popular with the public, are not so with their con- 
temporaries and rivals in fame. To this Shak- 
speare and Scott were happy exceptions. All ac- 
counts show this to have been the case with the first 
of these, the 'Gentle Willy.' His contemporaries, 
though they had to look up such a vast height, 
looked up with love as well as wonder. Words- 
worth was said by Coleridge to stride so far before 
other men as to dwindle in the distance. Shak- 
speare, like Mont Blanc, though exceedingly remote 



1 88 WALTER SCOTT. 

in his altitude, looked close at hand : his distance 
seemed annihilated by his dazzling splendour. 
Goethe alone, in his age, was counted as great or 
greater than Scott ; yet how delightful the relation 
which subsisted between these two sovereigns of 
literature ! Scott, who had commenced his career 
as a translator from the German Bard, was always 
ready to acknowledge his admiration of him, speaks 
in a letter to Goethe himself of ' the obligations 
which he owed to ONE to whom all the authors of 
this generation have been so much obliged that 
they are bound to look up to him with filial 
reverence,' and felt the news of his death very 
deeply. Goethe, on the other hand, in writing 
Scott, acknowledges 'the lively interest he had 
long taken in his wonderful pictures of human 
life/ When he read The Fair Maid of Perth, he 
expressed his intense appreciation of the masterly 
genius which that novel exhibited ; and even the 
Life of Napoleon he valued, not historically, nor 
artistically, but as a true record of the im- 
pressions made on such a mind as Scott's, by 
the marvellous revolutions which were in progress 
during his own time. To find two men of their 
order so far en rapport was the more pleasing, as 
in taste, certain points of morale, and religious 
views, they differed very widely, and as Scott was 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 189 

compelled to severely censure the spirit of some 
of Goethe's works. 

His friendship with Byron was still more re- 
markable. No two poets were ever more unlike 
in most respects, — their chief resemblance lying in 
the fact that their unbounded popularity during 
life passed with little pause, and as certainly as 
the crescent becomes the full moon, into permanent 
fame. The one was the least, the other the most 
self-conscious of men. The one was constitutionally 
happy, though subject to temporary depressions ; 
the other constitutionally melancholy to wretched- 
ness, though often surprised into strange excesses 
of boyish mirth. The one was theoretically a Tory, 
but, in sympathy with the lower orders, a Liberal ; 
the other theoretically a Whig, but in feeling as 
proud an aristocrat as ever admired the Norman 
blood seen and scarcely seen to flow in his delicate 
white hands. Byron was dissipated in life ; Scott a 
domestic, regular, yet genial man. Byron was a 
sceptic more from pride and passion than from 
conviction ; Scott a Christian more from the acci- 
dents of a Scotch training and constitutional vene- 
ration than from personal experience. Scott was 
intensely healthy in thought, temperament, and 
style ; Byron was a strong disease, embodied with 
weaknesses equal to, and which almost seemed to 



190 WALTER SCOTT. 

support and beautify his strength. Both resembled 
each other in their lameness ; but this, while it 
constituted to Byron a constant source of torment, 
and inspirited some insane utterances of discon- 
tent, was to Scott a gentle, ever-living lesson, a 
constant hint, * Thou also art mortal.' Sir Walter 
imagined that the link connecting him with Byron 
(as well as afterwards with Moore) was that they 
were both men of the world rather than authors. 
But this name, applied to them, did not signify the 
same thing as when used to others, nor were they 
men of the world at all in the strict sense of that 
term. Both, indeed, were up to the manners and 
usages of the world ; both mingled at ease in all 
circles ; both loved the world too well, — the one 
the position, the other the fame and pleasure, it 
gave them ; but neither must be confounded with 
that heartless, soulless slave of form and fashion, 
that prostrate worshipper of success and eclat, 
which the ordinary ' man of the world ' too often 
becomes. And, latterly, both seceded in a great 
measure from society, — Byron in disgust and dis- 
appointment ; Scott because, while he perhaps still 
loved, he had failed in it, and knew that even in 
his case it had exacted a certain penalty, and fixed 
a certain brand on his brow. 

In point of genius, taking Scott in the entire 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 191 

sphere of his achievements, he was undoubtedly 
the larger orb of the two. He was simpler and 
sincerer; his sympathies were much wider, his 
dramatic power greater, his knowledge immensely 
larger, his touches of nature making the whole 
world kin were far more numerous. As Shakspeare 
to Marlowe, as Goethe to Schiller, so was Scott to 
Byron. But as a poet Byron was unquestionably 
superior. Scott has produced no such compact 
and consummate masterpiece as The Corsair ; no 
such long and splendid gush of high -wrought 
enthusiasm as the 4th Canto of Childe Harold; 
no such exquisite poetical drama as Manfred ; no 
such daring flight of imagination as Cain; and no 
amalgam in a similar compass, of wit, sarcasm, 
poetry, passion, knowledge of human nature, inimi- 
table ease of writing, interesting adventure, terse 
sentiment, concentred power of description, and 
melting pathos, as Don Jtcan. In sobriety, sweet- 
ness, health, and breadth, he is as far superior to 
Byron as he is in moral sentiment ; but he is inferior 
in strength of muscle, in intensity, eloquence, and 
eagle-winged genius. It must be remembered, 
too, that Byron had performed all his marvellous 
achievements and was dead, at an age when Scott 
had only written the first of his larger poems, 
y^ In his relation to the Lakers, and particularly to 



192 WALTER SCOTT. 



Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott had ample room 
at once for his generosity and for his wisdom. He 
knew that these men were much underrated in 
their own time, and that before them lay a great 
empire in the future, — an empire which, though 
it could not overturn, yet might divide dominion 
with his own. Men of less kindly and manly 
nature might have felt prospective jealousy toward 
these poets who, though struggling, were secure 
of triumph, and whose influence might probably 
become profounder, if not so wide as his. Instead, 
however, of seeking to repress or damn them with 
faint praise, Scott is never weary, in his correspon- 
dence and conversation, of praising them ; and in 
his Novels, now by quotations from their works in 
the text, and now by allusions in footnotes to their 
talents, he writes them up with all his might. He 
procured, we have seen, the poet-laureateship for 
Southey. He listened to Coleridge, 'that extra- 
ordinary man who, during a very hearty dinner, 
did not say a single word, and then uttered a long 
and most eloquent harangue on the Samothracian 
mysteries ' with profound admiration, and did not 
dare to interrupt him even when he questioned 
the unity of Homer and the integrity of the Homeric 
poems. In The Monastery he calls him the most 
imaginative of our modern bards ; and in Ivan/we, 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 193 

after speaking of him in the text as having written 
but too little, he adds in a note, ' that his unfinished 
sketches display more talent than the laboured 
masterpieces of others.' For Wordsworth he felt 
the highest respect — a feeling compounded of 
admiration for his original genius, and of love for 
that genuineness and depth of nature, that sound 
moral feeling and pure enthusiasm, which he pos- 
sessed in a degree only inferior to Milton. 

In doing and feeling all this Scott was thoroughly 
disinterested. Even had he needed a quid pro quo 
and expected it, it did not come. Southey is 
rather stingy in his laudations of Scott ; and when 
he does not speak out plainly, he can hint a fault 
and hesitate dislike. Wordsworth never even pro- 
fessed any great admiration for Scott's poetry, 
although he loved the man warmly, and wrote a 
plaintive sonnet on his leaving his native land, 
which we shall quote in the sequel. 

Coleridge eloquently eulogized many of Scott's 
novels; but in this as in other matters his judg- 
ments were to a great extent neutralized by his 
caprice, uncertainty, and thousand-and-one way- 
ward moods. Toryism no doubt formed an element 
of union between the Lakers and Scott. But we 
are persuaded that even had these men been 

Radicals, and bitter detractors of Scott withal, 

N 



194 WALTER SCOTT. 

he would have spoken of their genius just as he 
did, — such was the largeness of his heart, and the 
sweet-blooded tone of his mental and moral con- 
stitution. 

With Moore, too, he was on kindly terms. And 
for George Crabbe he had a special affection, and 
did not know whether more to admire his simplicity 
as a man or his strong sinewy genius as a poet. 
And we shall find that Crabbe's poetry was read 
to him (as it had been a generation before to 
Charles James Fox) in his dying days. 

Constable knew to his cost how indulgent Scott 
was to the inferior writers, for whom the author of 
Waverley persuaded him to publish. He said he 
always ' liked Scott's ain bairns, but not those of 
his fostering.' On the other hand, a vast number 
of young writers of verse and of prose from every 
county in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and from 
every civilised country in the world, sent in books 
or MSS. to the affable Archangel of Abbotsford ; 
and hundreds of instances are on record of the real 
kindness which he showed them, — a kindness all the 
more valuable that he was strictly honest in his 
judgments and faithful in his strictures, although 
mild and measured in his expressions. Merciful to 
all, he never praised any in whom he did not per- 
ceive real merit. Ingratitude his placid nature 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 195 

prepared for, and would have forgiven ; but in- 
gratitude, unless from Hogg in one of his wild, 
senseless moods, which he lived himself to regret, 
he never met. He had the art of sheathing the 
sting of his censure in such honeyed phrases that 
it was scarcely felt, or, as the Irishman has it, — 

1 He kicked them down-stairs with such a good grace, 
That they thought he was handing them up.' 

It were well if all who in a lesser but still a large 
measure are pestered with sucking writers, and feel 
the penalty rather greater than the honour, could 
take a leaf out of the master's book, and be enabled 
to imitate his inward honesty and his outward bon- 
homie. Not till one tries can he feel how difficult 
it is to do so. 

Around Scott there rose a giant brood of novelists, 
in Scotland and elsewhere, inferior to him, but of 
decided power and genius, — strong spurs upon his 
mountain chain. Such were Professor Wilson, 
Lockhart, Gait, Miss Ferrier the authoress of The In- 
heritance and Marriage, and, some time afterwards, 
Lord Bulwer Lytton. In all of these Scott took a 
warm interest, and felt for them a true admiration. 
He lived long enough to read and see the promise 
in Bulwer's earlier novels. And all these authors 
have reciprocated his feelings, — Bulwer dedicating 



196 WALTER SCOTT. 

his Eugene Aram to Scott in language glowing 
with gratitude and enthusiasm. Unless Bulwer, 
none of these writers approached their model 
in popularity, nor did any other, till Dickens 
arose, — Dickens, of whose sudden and premature 
death we have this day heard (the ioth of June), 
in whom, in common with the whole literary world, 
and far beyond that world's limits, we mourn a 
great cheerful light quenched ere it was evening, 
and in whom we have always traced many of Scott's 
qualities, specially his warmth and width of sym- 
pathies, his genial and kindly nature, and the 
desire, which was ever uppermost with him, to find 
the soul of goodness in things that are evil, and the 
essence of beauty in objects thought by vulgar 
eyes common and unclean. We called him in his 
youth ' Bonnie Prince Charlie,' and must now 
lament that in the fulness of his powers, and in the 
height of his benignant dominion, he has been 
called away ! 




CHAPTER XVI. 

1 CARLE, NOW THE KING 'S COME.' 

ROM London Scott came down to Abbots- 
ford, — plans for the completion of which 
he had brought along with him. Lock- 
hart and his young wife had established themselves 
in the little cottage of Chiefswood, and there Scott 
was often with them, adding fresh brightness to 
what was then a bright and happy spot. Often in 
the mornings, after his daily task was over, ' the 
clatter of Sybil Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mus- 
tard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of 
reveillee under our windows, were the signal that 
he had burst his toils, and meant for that day to 
" take his ease in his inn." ' He was then busy with 
The Pirate, and sometimes wrote chapters of it in 
a dressing-room in Chiefswood, which he would 
hand to his friend William Erskine, who, as sheriff 

of Orkney and Shetland, knew the localities well, 
107 



WALTER SCOTT. 



and was proud of being consulted in the progress 
of the book. Altogether this was a busy and 
joyous autumn with Scott. Besides The Pirate, he 
was writing some miscellaneous things. Among 
others, he had begun a series of Private Letters in 
the antique style, descriptive of manners in the 
time of James First of England. On reflection, he 
threw them aside, and employed their materials in 
the Fortunes of Nigel, the first chapters of which 
he wrote ere The Pirate was completed. His 
pleasure, indeed, might have been somewhat abated 
had he known that the sale of his novels was 
falling off considerably, and that their reputation 
was slowly waning. This, however, was carefully, 
but we think injudiciously, concealed from him 
by his publishers ; and his confidence in his 
powers was such, that he had, ere Nigel appeared, 
exchanged instruments and received bills for four 
works of fiction, all unwritten, and their names 
unknown. 

In December 1821 The Pirate appeared, and was, 
on the whole, well received. The story, indeed, 
was extremely improbable, and in many parts not 
pleasing. Noma was . a fantastic character, — Meg 
Merrilees reproduced, and made ridiculous by her 
own father. But there was a strong smell of the 
sea throughout ; and the wild scenery of Shetland 



1 CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 199 

was described with picturesque and vivid power. 
The ancient manners of Ultima Thule were pre- 
served in amber. The characters, as a whole, were 
admirable, — the Pirates, rough, fresh, and strong, 
with Cleveland towering above them into a man, 
if not into a finished hero, — Claud Halcro, capital 
with his catchword of ' glorious John,' and his fine, 
spirited songs, — Magnus Troil, genuine heart of 
Norway fir, true, genial, frank, and noble, — Bryce 
Snailsfoot, the most hypocritical of professors, and 
Triptolemus Yellowley, the most ludicrously un- 
fortunate of agricultural improvers. And what a 
magical effect is produced by the picturesque con- 
trast between the amiable sisters, Minna and 
Brenda, — one dark, starry, and beautiful as an 
oriental night, and the other serene and mildly 
lustrous as a Zetland summer day ! 

Nothing very remarkable occurred in his history 
till, in the course of two rainy mornings, he pro- 
duced Halidon Hill. This was at first intended as 
a contribution to a volume of Poetical Miscellanies 
Joanna Baillie was projecting in behalf of a friend 
who had got into deep commercial waters, but, as 
it expanded beyond his intentions, he published it 
in a separate volume, and wrote for Miss Baillie 
instead MacDuff's Cross. This small mediocrity 
of Halidon Hill Constable purchased from him at 



WALTER SCOTT. 



the price for which, fourteen years before, Marmion 
had been sold — a thousand pounds ! 

Byron, meanwhile, had dedicated Cain to Scott, 
— a poem which the spice of profanity it contains 
rendered very unpopular at the time, but which 
Scott regarded as one of the grandest of the noble 
poet's productions ; certainly it is one of the most 
original, and in parts the purest and most plaintive. 
In May 1822 The Fortunes of Nigel appeared, and 
was received in London with much enthusiasm ; 
in other places with a kind of sober delight suit- 
able to its general character. As a picture of an 
age, and as a portraiture of James the First, it is 
almost perfect. Alsatia is a unique sketch, as good 
as could have come from one of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, and with some touches of exquisite 
depth and humour, as, where describing the cap- 
tain and the hedge parson fighting and swearing 
at each other, he says, r A strife in which the 
parson's superior acquaintance with theology en- 
abled him greatly to surpass the Captain,' a stroke 
worthy of Fielding. Margaret Ramsay and the 
Lady Hermione are both finely drawn and finely 
contrasted, and so are Jin Vin and Frank Tunstall. 
The three villains, Dalgarno, Captain Culpepper, and 
Andrew Skurliewhitter, are all damned to divers 
degrees of everlasting infamy with a discrimination 



'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME.' 201 

equal to the severity of the sentence. George 
Heriot has full and heaped justice done to his 
shrewd and benevolent character. The Prince and 
Buckingham, too, are vigorously sketched. Nor 
must Ritchie Moniplies be forgotten, with his 
solemn countenance and coiled -up self-conceit, 
dismissed in company, — surely the punishment is 
too penal, — with Martha Trapbois, with her long 
purse, horrible squint, and vinegar visage. Nigel, 
in its usually quiet and subdued tone, resembles 
one of the tragedies of Lillo ; and its power is as 
homely in its elements as commanding in its 
results. Peveril of tlie Peak was begun ere Nigel 
was fully launched ; but whether from rapidity of 
production, or some other cause, it ranked far down 
in the scale of his Novels, — the first part being in- 
tolerably tedious, and the second improbable and 
overdone — a long convulsive spasm. Fenella alone 
(partly derived from Goethe's Mignon), like a 
strange shooting meteor, crosses and relieves the 
dulness ; and even she is more distinguished by 
oddity than by strength. Yet this romance of 
Peveril served to give a new cognomen to Scott. 
Patrick Robertson, the famous wit, was busy crack- 
ing jests to the younger lawyers, when he saw 
Sir Walter approaching. 'Silence, boys, here 
comes old Peveril. I see the Peak.' Scott's reply 



202 WALTER SCOTT. 

was ready, ' Better Peveril of the Peak any day 
than Peter with the painch! 

Besides various other matters, Scott had found 
time amidst all this for writing The Lives of the 
Novelists in the big, clumsy series of the Ballan- 
tynes, and had written them with consummate 
skill, taste, and good feeling. 

In August 1822 George the Fourth visited Edin- 
burgh; and while Byron was writing with prodi- 
gious spirit, and the very sublime of scorn, his 
Irish Avatar ', where he satirizes in the bitterest 
terms the visit the year before of Finn the Fourth 
to Ireland, that land 

1 Which he loved like his bride,' 

Scott was moving heaven and earth to secure him 
a triumphant reception in the northern metropolis. 
Among a hundred other appliances and means 
which he was compelled to use, not only to raise, 
but to direct and control the steam of enthusiasm, 
he consulted the Muse, and she produced a clever 
ballad, entitled ' Carle, now the King's come,' in 
which he flattered with great tact all the parties, 
particularly the Highland chieftains, who had con- 
flicting claims to precedence in connection with the 
royal arrival. He employed means more substan- 
tial than poetry. He gave sumptuous entertain- 



'CARLE, NOW THE KING'S COME: 203 

ments, and these had their own conciliating influ- 
ence. At length, on the 14th of August, we see 
' Peveril' and his snowy Peak rowing, through thick 
rain, to the Royal George, which is riding at anchor 
in Leith roads. The King is standing on the 
deck of the yacht, and when told that Scott is 
alongside, he exclaims, ' What ! Sir Walter Scott ! 
the man in Scotland I most wish to see ! Let him 
come up.' Scott then ascended the ship, and, with 
an appropriate speech, presented His Majesty, in 
the name of the ladies of Edinburgh, with a St. 
Andrew's Cross in silver, which the King of course 
received graciously, and promised to wear in public 
in gratitude to the fair donors. The 15 th, the day 
of the landing, saw Sir Walter a proud and a busy 
man. He formed, of course, a prominent object 
in the procession from Leith to Holyrood, which 
must have been a magnificent spectacle, although 
mixed with a good deal of trumpery, with the 
military element preponderating too much, and 
certainly not so interesting as when Queen Vic- 
toria, on the 3d September 1842, with Albert by her 
side, rode up from Holyrood to the Castle through 
multitudes, every heart in which felt the loyalty 
which the lips were loudly proclaiming ; nor so 
sublime as the Volunteer Review on the 7th August 
i860, when the eye of royalty and the loveliest 



204 WALTER SCOTT. 

light of autumn blended in looking down on the 
collected might, manhood, and valour of the Scot- 
tish nation, and when many an enthusiast felt 
Scott's words burning on his tongue, 

1 Where is the coward that would not dare 
To fight for such a land ?' 

Two of the remarkable men who witnessed the 
procession of 1822 we must single out from the 
rest : George Crabbe, who has come from the 
Vale of Belvoir to visit Sir Walter, and who stands 
amidst the crowd thinking much, saying nothing, 
adding not a solitary cheer to the sea of sound 
which is roaring on all sides ; and Dr. Chalmers, 
who has lifted off his hat from his grand head not 
yet grown grey, and is waving it in the air, ex- 
claiming the while, ' God bless him ; he is a fine 
fellow.' 

We need not dwell on the further particulars of 
an event at which Scotland now blushes, and at 
nothing more than at the share her greatest son 
had in this act of public degradation. At the 
time, Sir Walter received a share of attention and 
applause only second to the sovereign. Sir Robert 
Peel says, ' On the day on which His Majesty 
was to pass from Holyrood, Scott proposed to me 
to accompany him up the High Street to see 



1 CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 205 

whether the arrangements were completed. I said 
to him, " You are trying a dangerous experiment ; 
you will never get through in privacy." He said, 
" They are entirely absorbed in loyalty." But I 
was the better prophet. He was recognised from 
the one extremity of the street to the other ; and 
never did I see such an instance of national devo- 
tion expressed.' 

Yet some ludicrous misadventures, along with 
one serious calamity and one signal mortification, 
befell Scott during these gala days. When the 
King received him in his yacht, he ordered a bottle 
of Highland whisky to be produced, took a glass 
himself, and made Scott drink another. Scott 
requested that the King would present him with 
the glass out of which he had just drunk his 
health, and proceeded to deposit it in the safest 
portion of his dress. When he returned to Castle 
Street, he found Crabbe newly arrived. He saluted 
him with warmth, and, forgetting all about the 
King's present, sat down beside him ; the glass 
perished, and he screamed aloud under the advent 
of a considerable wound. This was only a scratch. 
But a day or two after this, his friend Lord Kin- 
neder (William Erskine) died, stung to death by 
a base calumny, and Scott, on one of the busiest 
days of the royal visit, attended his funeral, and 



206 WALTER SCOTT. 

returning in a most melancholy plight, had to 
plunge into gaieties, or, ' as Crabbe has it,' 
said he, 

1 To hide in rant the heartache of the night.' 

There were other circumstances which annoyed 
him. There was a general rumour that His Majesty 
did not fully appreciate Scott's services in the visit 
matters, and that he spoke of him and his ever- 
lasting clans and tartans as a bore. Lockhart, 
indeed, denies this, but some believe it notwith- 
standing. Mrs. Johnstone, the well-known author 
of Clan Albin and editor of Tait, then on the spot, 
asserted it often in print, and specially insisted 
on the fact that cards were issued for a royal 
entertainment at Castle Street, but withdrawn in 
disgust. If so, the King's conduct was very un- 
grateful to one who had done so much to gild his 
stained reputation, and to uphold his tottering 
throne both by his private and public efforts. 

Another dark event blackened still more this 
August. Lord Castlereagh died by his own hands, 
it being understood that one cause at least of the 
sad event was his counsel, like that of Achitophel, 
having been rejected. He had opposed the royal 
visit, but . opposed it in vain. It seemed the 
Man's Hand writing prophetic characters of lamen- 



'CARLE, NOW THE KINGS COME: 207 

tation, mourning, and woe on the wall of a Bel- 
shazzar banqueting-room, and 

' Made men tremble who never wept.' 

In fine, Scott's exertions on this occasion nearly- 
cost him his life, and, but for the safety-valve of a 
prickly eruption on the skin, he would have fallen 
a victim to the effects of his sincere but short- 
sighted loyalty. When recovered, he instantly re- 
sumed his ^i^antic labours. 




CHAPTER XVII. 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 




( N the close of 1822 Scott commenced 
Quentin Durward, but was considerably 
retarded by his environment with the 
various clubs, — Bannatyne, Roxburgh, Blair Adam, 
etc., — of which he was a member, as well as by his 
connection with some of those joint-stock com- 
panies, such as the Edinburgh Oil Company, which 
were beginning to spring up like mushrooms 
around him. The subject was probably suggested 
to him by the return of his friend Mr. Skene from 
France, bringing along with him drawings and 
landscapes of that beautiful land, besides an ac- 
curately kept and well-written journal. It was, 
however, a drawback to the novelist that he had 
never visited the country himself, and he got at 
times perplexed and bewildered amidst the locali- 
ties he was compelled to describe. 

208 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 209 

In June 1823 the novel appeared, fitly coming 
out amidst the blaze and splendour of summer, for 
it is one of the gayest and most buoyant of all his 
tales. At home it was, strange to tell, not well 
received at first, but was welcomed on the Con- 
tinent with a burst of applause so loud and unani- 
mous, that its spent echo returned on this country 
was fame. The power was seen to lie, first of all, 
in the youthful freshness breathing out of Quentin 
himself, one of the most life-like of all Scott's 
heroes ; again, in the unmitigated interest of the 
story, and the elastic, easy force of the style ; but 
especially in the contrast, drawn out with a line so 
long and bold, between the bull-headed Burgundy 
and the crafty, cunning, unscrupulous, cruel, and 
superstitious Louis XI. Shakspeare in many of 
his plays adds a fool to his dramatis persona 
as a foil, a wild ornament, and a running com- 
mentary. Scott often uses, for a similar purpose, 
a villain with a dash of romance in him, and never 
with more effect than in Hayraddin Maugrabin the 
Bohemian, who is no commonplace town black- 
guard, but a poetical ragamuffin, his eye flashing with 
a mystic fire, with strange Oriental blasphemies 
mingling with unmeasured leasings as they flow 
out of his supple yet burning lips, and his swarthy 
countenance, seeming to shine, not in the light of 



210 WALTER SCOTT. 

sun or moon, but in the weird lustre of the star 
Aldeboran, the Cynosure for ages of his wandering 
race. Scott puts into his mouth a ' dying speech/ 
but there is no ' confession/ unless it be of his 
hardened, hopeless, and glorying atheism. How 
he dashes his daring hand into the waters of an- 
nihilation before plunging amidst them ! Danton 
alone has equalled the following burst : ' Soul ! 
Name not that word to me again. There is, there 
can be, there shall be no such thing : it is a dream 
of priestcraft. My hope, trust, and expectation is 
that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt 
into the general mass of nature, to be recom- 
pounded in the other forms with which she daily 
supplies those which daily disappear, and return 
under different forms, — the watery particles to 
streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich 
their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in 
the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of 
Aldeboran and his brethren. In this faith have I 
lived, and in this faith shall I die !' 

In August 1823 Abbotsford was brightened still 
more by the presence of Miss Edgeworth ; and a 
most delightful reunion took place between two 
spirits who, notwithstanding great disparity of 
genius, resembled each other in nature, simplicity, 
healthiness, humour, good sense, and the power of 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 



painting the manners of primitive races. The 
harvest moon of that beautiful season saw no 
happier hearts, 

' In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous ray/ 

than hers who produced Castle Rackrent and 
Ennui, and his who had equalled if not surpassed 
them both in Waverley and Guy Mannering. It 
was a fortnight of unmingled felicity to them, and 
the whole party circling round them. 

About the middle of December Scott published 
St. Ronaris Well, where, again, the old layer of 
weak and commonplace matter made its appear- 
ance, and that so prominently, that not the most 
forcible writing in parts was able to counteract its 
influence. As in the story, the hostelry of Meg 
Dodds was injured by the tawdry modern hotel 
with its gimcrack inhabitants. The villain of the 
tale was too bad, and as mean as he was detestable ; 
and the termination was painfully tragic. There 
was no tedium, however, in the slip-slop matter, 
and the power of the master came out ever and 
anon in all its plenitude. Indeed, the characters of 
this novel are wonderfully fresh and numerous. 
There is Meg Dodds herself, the queen of alehouse- 
keepers, the lady of Luckies, the modern and more 
than Mrs. Quickly; Clara Mowbray, the very 



212 WALTER SCOTT. 

crack, in whose mirror-like mind follows always 
the waving line of beauty, and whose death is so 
overpoweringly pathetic ; Touchwood, that noble 
old Nabob ; Captain MacTurk, with his short red 
nose, snuffing Glenlivet or gunpowder in every 
wind, and fearing the broom of Meg Dodds more 
than a whole battery of cannon ; the melancholy 
Tyrrell ; Joseph Cargill, the sad, gifted, amiable, 
dreaming recluse ; Solmes, the double-faced sombre 
scoundrel ; Mucklewham, the well-named doer, or 
man of Scottish business in the past age ; the 
odd urchin who crosses Tekyll on his way to the 
well ; Bindloose, the wary banker ; the old hump- 
backed postilion, who (a thing Thomas Aird 
specially notices), when Tyrrell, who had been 
thought dead, reappears, flees into the stable, and 
— a touch of quite Shakspearean verisimilitude — 
begins in the extremity of his terror to saddle a 
horse ; and last, not least, the inimitable Widow 
Blower, changing Dr. Quackleben's name at every 
second sentence, and at last changing her own, and 
becoming Mrs. Quackleben, and who is led to the 
nuptial altar like a fat hog to sacrifice, rejoicing 
in her fillet 'Draws.' ;Such variety and richness 
of character found in one of Scott's second-class 
novels is something quite wonderful. The village 
of Inverleithen, although not at all like St. Ronan's 



SCO TT IN I RE LA ND. 2 1 3 

in the main features of its scenery, eagerly claimed 
the name ; and the St. Ronan's Games were formed, 
and continued long to be celebrated there, being 
usually followed by a dinner, at which such men 
as Hogg, Lockhart, and Professor Wilson were the 
presiding spirits. 

1824 produced but one novel, Redgauntlet, — a 
novel where, unlike the former, all the separate 
parts in point of writing are excellent, but do 
not blend happily into a whole. The book is an 
awkward compound of narrative and correspon- 
dence. Of Charles Stuart brought again into the 
play we cry, — 

' Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,' 

and are tempted to hiss him off as a solemn, 
pompous noodle. Others of the characters are 
failures. Dairsie Latimer is, begging his pardon, a 
donkey ; Allan Fairford a prig ; Redgauntlet him- 
self a spasmodic abortion ; Lilias a doll ; Pate in 
Peril an incident rather than a character ; Fair- 
ford's father too stiff and formal ; Crystal Nixon a 
villain pure and simple, almost the only villain in 
all Scott's Novels without a single redeeming trait ; 
old Tom Trumbull a hideous, incredible hypocrite ; 
and Joshua Geddes the driest of all dry Quakers. 
But Peter Peebles, with thy tow wig, thy ever- 



214 WALTER SCOTT. 

lasting lawsuit, and thine insatiable thirst, and 
Nanty Ewart, with thy sunburnt face, eyes shot 
with bile and blood, wasted constitution, and 
broken heart, ye must live for ever. And so, too, 
shall the boy Benjie and Wandering Willy, and 
that ancestor of his, riding ' bauld wi' brandy and 
desperate with distress' through the black wood 
of Pitmurkie, and forgathering there with the 
terrible stranger, who takes him to the mouth of 
hell and a step farther. Indeed, the whole of 
' Wandering Willy's Tale' is Shakspearean in power 
of imagination and graphic ease of description. 

Redgaimtlet was rather a disappointment at the 
time, and, whether for this reason or not, no other 
novel appeared this year. Scott, however, found 
for himself full employment in furnishing his library 
and museum, painting his house, corresponding 
with his many friends, speaking at the opening of 
the New Edinburgh Academy, — an academy which 
has since produced so many fine scholars, and been 
presided over by such able teachers : need we 
name among the former the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury and Robertson of Brighton, and among 
the latter Archdeacon Williams, Carmichael, and 
MacDougall, — writing an epitaph on his favourite 
dog Maida, and watching with a poet's eye the 
red billows of that terrible fire which, in November, 



SCO TT IN IRELAND. 2 1 5 

reduced so many of the old buildings of Edin- 
burgh to ashes. This year died Byron ; and Sir 
Walter wrote, in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, 
a generous and glowing tribute to his memory, 
which ranks in eloquence, if not in exquisite de- 
licacy, with those testimonials paid by Jeffrey 
to Playfair and to James Watt immediately after 
their deaths, and which contains one very noble 
image. Alluding to Byron's faults, and to his 
early and sudden death, Scott says, ' It is as 
if the great orb of day were to disappear for 
ever from our view while we were , busy looking 
through our telescopes at the spots which bedimmed 
its lustre' This would have been as true as it is 
sublime a few years before ; but at the time re- 
ferred to men were rather gazing at the sun throw- 
ing off an eclipse which had been strangling his 
beams, and now, with the last speck of the dark- 
ness, the luminary himself had vanished. This 
tribute of Scott only expressed the universal feel- 
ing at the time. No death, unless that of the 
Princess Charlotte or Prince Albert, ever produced 
such a wide sensation as that of Lord Byron. It 
seemed to stun the very heart of the world. En- 
thusiasts in Greece, who were flocking to his stan- 
dard, when they heard that the Pilgrim of Eternity 
had departed, turned back and went homewards. 



216 WALTER SCOTT. 

Poets and literary men in all countries of the 
earth, from the patriarch Goethe to the youngest 
rhymster, vied with each other in pouring out 
tributes to his memory, which had one unques- 
tionable merit — they were all sincere. Old men in 
London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow wept ; and boys 
on the verge of the Perthshire Highlands stood 
dumb and awestruck at the tidings, as if an earth- 
quake were shaking their native vale. Many 
blamed destiny for his death ; many the Grecian 
war ; none, at this time, the unhappy victim him- 
self. Death seemed to have expiated all his 
offences ; and that ' late remorse of love ' which he 
had predicted was seen shedding tears and sowing 
laurels over his early grave. Thus, in the main, 
for five or six years, it continued till the year 1830, 
when Moore's Life awoke a fresh gush of interest in 
his memory, and Lady Byron, no doubt under consi- 
derable provocation, stepped forward and uttered — 
what ? a hint, an insinuation, a whisper ; but a hint 
of the most damning character, — an insinuation of 
the most deadly and damaging kind, — a whisper, 
methinks, resembling that of which Coleridge in 
his Mariner speaks, — 

1 A wicked whisper came, and made 
Their hearts as dry as dust.' 

And we need hardly mention how Mrs. Stowe 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 217 

came out lately with her True Story, opening up 
all the old sluices of slander, and giving to the hint- 
whispers airy-nothing — foul gas of Lady Byron's 
document a ' local habitation and a name,' — a rash 
and rank embodiment. On this subject we shall 
say no more than this, that Scott, from his letters, 
seems to have known the very worst about Byron ; 
and yet, though he "says of some things he heard 
about him, 'Premat alta nox,' he continued to 
love, admire, and defend him, while lamenting that 
he was a Genie mat loge, — words we may translate 
into, ' Byron was an Apollo saddled with a lame 
foot, a bad temper, a bilious temperament, a 
foolish mother, and the passions of a demoniac ; 
but, notwithstanding all his infirmities, vices, and 
misfortunes, the scion of a celestial race, — an 
erring man, or fallen angel if you will, but not a 
monster.' 

1825 began gaily with Scott; and in February 
his son Walter married Miss Jobson, the heiress 
of Lochore, in Fife, — the young couple repairing, 
after the marriage, to the bridegroom's regimental 
quarters in Ireland, where Sir Walter promised 
to visit them in the summer. The Tales of the 
Crusaders appeared in June. The Betrothed was 
good in the commencement, and powerful near 
the close. The hawking scene at the Red Pool 



218 WALTER SCOTT. 

is in Scott's best style, but much of it was tedious 
and drawling ; and the novel, as a whole, had too 
much of that old wives' fable shape, in which, 
alas, like the formosa mulier of Horace, ending in 
atrum piscem, his unequalled story-telling power 
was doomed to degenerate. But The Talisman 
was received nearly as Ivanhoe had been. En- 
chantment and elaborate finish were never more 
thoroughly united than in this tale, which Wilson 
has pronounced Scott's only artistic Avhole, and 
which drew from Mrs. Hemans, after spending 
some delightful hours reading it in her garden, 
one of her sweetest minor strains. About this 
time Archibald Constable projected his famous 
Miscellany ; and it was agreed that one-half of 
a cheap issue of Waverley should begin the 
series, and be followed by a Life of Napoleon, in 
four parts, by the author of Waverley. To this 
Scott jocularly alludes in the introduction to 
The Crusaders. And no sooner was the scheme 
started than he commenced, with characteristic 
promptitude, the preliminary sketch of the French 
Revolution. 

On the 8th of July he set out, along with Lock- 
hart, for Ireland. He went there to see his son, 
to visit Miss Edgeworth, and to gratify the warm- 
hearted people of that country. They sailed down 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 219 

the Firth of Clyde, where Scott got very gracious 
with a Glasgow bailie, — a veritable Nicol Jarvie ; 
and as they were drinking their rum punch, told 
him an amusing story about Thorn of Govan, 
a witty divine of the last century, who once 
preached before the Town Council of Glasgow 
from the words, 'Ephraim's drink is sour, and he 
hath committed whoredom continually ;' on which 
the bailie groaned, and said that he doubted 
'Tham o' Govan was at heart a ne'er-do-weel/ 
They crossed to Belfast, paying a guinea each 
for the passage across. On their way to Dublin 
they halted at Drogheda, where Scott visited 
the field of the battle of the Boyne, and recited 
to an astonished veteran who accompanied him 
the famous ballad, The Crossing of the Water. 
Arrived, they went to Walter's house ; and Scott 
looked round with joy and pride as he first sat 
at his son's table. Most people will remember 
with what a peculiar feeling they first sat at 
their own ; but this was a purer emotion, and is 
well likened by Lockhart to a passage in Pindar, 
where, in order to paint the highest rapture of 
happiness, he represents an old man, with a foam- 
ing wine-cup in his hand, at his child's wedding- 
feast. So soon as his arrival in Dublin was known, 
he received every possible attention, both in public 



WALTER SCOTT. 



and private. When recognised in the street, and 
when visiting the theatre, he was received with 
loud huzzas ; indeed, the enthusiasm was so great, 
that it scandalized the worthy Glasgow bailie, 
who said it was 'owre like worshipping the crea- 
ture.' This is only a specimen of the droll stories 
with which this Irish excursion characteristically 
abounded. A college librarian said to Scott, ' I 
have been so busy that I have not read your 
Redgauntlct! ' I have not happened to fall in with 
such a work,' was Scott's quiet reply. A female 
guide had shown him and his party some of the 
usual show-scenes ; when he was gone, a gentle- 
man told her he was a poet. ' Poet,' said she, 
1 divil a bit of him, but an honourable gentle- 
man ; he gave me half-a-crown.' On one occa- 
sion he gave a fellow a shilling when sixpence 
was the fee. ' Remember you owe me sixpence, 
Pat.' * May your honour live till I pay you.' All 
Pat's clothes would have been dearly bought at 
the sum. 

After visiting Wicklow and its romantic and 
famous spots, he went to Edgeworthstown, where he 
renewed his friendship with the gifted Maria ; and 
she, with tears in her eyes, agreed with him when 
he said that all things were moonshine when com- 
pared to the education of the heart. He rebuked 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 221 

there one of his daughters, who was despising 
something as vulgar. ' What is vulgar ? it is only- 
common ; and nothing that is common, except 
wickedness, can deserve to be spoken of with 
contempt.' 

A mad poet amused him much, named O' Kelly, 
who, calling on Scott, inflicted on him the lines : 

' Three poets, of three different nations born, 
The United Kingdom in this age adorn : 
Byron of England, Scott of Scotland's blood, 
And Erin's pride, O' Kelly great and good.' 

Scott needed all these little ludicrous interludes 
to support his spirits under the sight of the ruined 
country he found Ireland to be. He visited Kil- 
larney, Cork, the Groves of Blarney, Fermoy, 
Lismore, Kilkenny, etc., and returned to Dublin, 
his whole journey being a procession of triumph; 
deputations meeting him at the entrance of every 
town, and crowds attending him all through the 
streets ; saluted everywhere as the monarch man 
of the time. Yet he seems to have left the Green 
Isle without regret. 

He returned home by the Cumberland Lakes. 
There took place one of the most brilliant re- 
unions and regattas which even that classical 
region ever witnessed. Seldom have so many 
eminent men met in such favourable circum- 



WALTER SCOTT. 



stances, as in August 1825, under Mr Bolton's 
roof-tree, and on the banks of Windermere. There 
was Canning-, pale in cheek, and with the winding- 
sheet already well up his breast, but with his 
genius as lively, his eye as bright, and his brow 
as commanding as ever. There was Wordsworth, 
stooping, not yet under the load of years, but of 
that brooding thought and inverted reverence with 
which, all his life, he had admired the 'ground out 
of which he was taken,' and 

'Worshipped Nature with a thought profound.' 

There, in the prime of his majestic manhood, was 
Christopher North, probably by gifts, if not by 
culture or achievements, a greater man than any of 
them all ; in appearance unquestionably the first, — 
the facsimile of Scott's own Cceur de Lion, but 
more anxious to obtain fame as the Admiral of 
the Lake than as a world-poet, critic, or humorist. 
There was Lockhart, certainly one of the cleverest 
and sharpest of men, if not quite on the level of 
his companions. And there the Mighty Minstrel, 
flushed with his Irish reception, with the success 
of the Talisman, and with the projected Life of 
Napoleon, spent his last thoroughly triumphant 
days. Ah ! little thought he they were the last. 
Yet there was no undue or ominous elation ; and 



SCOTT IN IRELAND. 223 

when he returned to Abbotsford, he sat quietly- 
down to his labours connected with the Life of the 
Emperor, and to his usual routine of country 
business and country pleasures. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 



DECAY AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 




COTT was now fifty-four, an age when 
many men are at their very best, with 
the strength of their bodies unimpaired, 
and the faculties of their minds in full vigour. But 
ever since the attack of cramp his constitution was 
not so strong as it seemed ; and he had, besides, 
complained of what he calls a ' thickening of the 
blood, or whoreson apoplexy,' the disease of which 
he ultimately died, and to which he attributed 
the dulness of Peveril. And Lockhart hints that 
attacks of this sort occurred now and then before 
his terrible seizure in 1830. But the angel of 
disease at present suspended his blow, and left 
other ministers of ruin to do their work instead. 

His labour in the preparation of Napoleon was 
of a very different kind from that of his Novels. 
These required no previous study, — that had been 

224 



DEC A Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN 225 

the work of the first half of his life ; but for the 
other he had to consult authorities and pore over 
note-books, so that we may venture to say that he 
had to read as much for a single page in the 
Napoleon as for a whole volume in the Waver ley 
series. When we looked through the library in 
Abbotsford some years ago, and saw the shelves 
crowded with folio Monitenrs, we said, ' These are 
the great French guns which laid the flower of 
Scotchmen low.' When he came to the work of 
original composition, he came well crammed, no 
doubt, but jaded, with an aching brow and a dim 
eye ; and his writing, though generally spirited, 
was often hasty and careless. 

During the latter months of 1825 Scott enter- 
tained some distinguished visitors, — among others, 
Lord Gifford and his lady, Harry of Exeter, and, 
above all, Tom Moore, who had expressed his 
regret that he was not present when Scott and 
Killarney were introduced to each other, — a regal 
interview verily worth not only seeing, but, as Dr. 
Johnson used to distinguish, ' going to see.' The 
conjunction of Moore and Scott itself must have 
been an interesting sight — the delicious butterfly- 
bard of Erin, carrying, however, what butterflies do 
not, a bag of highly concentrated venom and a 
sharp and polished sting ; the slight, dapper little 



226 WALTER SCOTT. 

person, looking insignificant till you noticed ' The 
Twopenny Post Bag ' and other such dangerous 
explosives slung around him, — the dainty and 
fastidious darling of society, — the Hafiz Anacreon 
Catullus of his day, — the pungent morsel of a 
man, like Mustard Seed in the Midsummer Nights 
Dream, meeting with the brawny poet and novelist 
of Scotland, with his white hair, sagacious face, tall 
figure, and Matterhorn-like forehead ; Moore in 
his walks armed with a smart Malacca cane — Scott 
with a sturdy oak plant, which Friar Tuck might 
have flourished ; Moore at table sipping his French 
wines, and Scott imbibing his mountain dew; 
Moore warbling his Irish Melodies with the ' treble 
of a fay ' — Scott adding his rough and tuneless but 
hearty chorus, with voice like a Westphalian boar ; 
and yet both delighted with each other, and con- 
nected, like Goldsmith's Dwarf and Giant, in close 
offensive and defensive league. They had much 
common ground, were both intimate friends of 
Byron, both patriotic poets, both men who com- 
bined great enthusiasm with great common sense 
and a thorough knowledge of the ways of society, 
including the upper and the lower orders alike, and 
were both kindly and generous men. Moore kept 
a diary while there, and sent it to Lockhart, with 
the additional words, 1 1 parted from Scott with the 



DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 227 

feeling that all the world might admire him in his 
works, but that those only could learn to love him 
as he deserved who had seen him at Abbotsford.' 
Of course you never can thoroughly understand 
any man, or love him with sufficient warmth, till 
you have known him in private ; but it is the pecu- 
liarity of Scott's works that they compel you, not 
only to admire the author, but to love the man, 
and make all his readers feel as if they, like Mr. 
Moore, had been at Abbotsford. Moore adds : ' I 
give you carte blanche to say what you please of 
my sense of his cordial kindness and gentleness ; 
perhaps a not very dignified phrase would express 
my feeling better than any fine one, — it was that 
he was a thorough good fellow.' This we may 
know and say without having lived a while with 
the Great Unknown. Every page of his works 
proves it ; and especially every character in his 
Novels into whom he has thrown his whole soul, 
such as the Baron of Bradwardine, Paulus Pleydell, 
Esq., Dandie Dinmont, Jonathan Oldbuck, Bailie 
Nicol Jarvie, John Duke of Argyle, Robin Hood, 
Rob Roy ; and Richard Cceur de Lion is, like his 
creator, a thorough good fellow. 

Scott astonished Moore by revealing to him, with- 
out reserve, that he was the author of the Waverley 
Novels. The mask had been long worn ; he was 



22S WALTER SCOTT. 

beginning to tire of it ; he wore it now carelessly, 
and, alas ! did not know that his dropping it, like 
the dropping of the glass mask to his own Alascor, 
was to be the signal of doom. It was not in expec- 
tation of the ruin which was at hand, rendering 
concealment impossible, but in mere gaiety and 
triumph, that he mentioned the Novels to Moore as 
his own, and spoke of them as a source of great 
wealth ; yet he added that he was not making 
them so good as he used to do. The two thorough 
good fellows parted, as Scott said to the other, 
' friends for life.' 

After Moore came Mrs. Coutts, the famous 
banker's widow, afterwards Duchess of St Alban's, 
whom Scott treated with high respect, partly be- 
cause his high-born guests were disposed to cut her 
for her vulgarity, and Scott did not, as he said, 
recognise that word as English ; and partly be- 
cause, with a feeling seemingly opposite to this, he 
had a profound reverence for the distinction of 
wealth, as well as for other of the world's distinc- 
tions. This certainly was a weakness, but it were 
useless to hide it, — more useless still to seek to 
apologize for it, any more than for the wart on the 
brow of a noble-looking man, or the cast in the 
eye of a beautiful woman. Scott could afford a 
hundred weak points, and he had not ten. 



DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 229 

At this time mutterings of the great commer- 
cial storm of 1825-26, so soon to break upon 
the country with unprecedented violence, began 
to startle even the echoes of Abbotsford. Pope 
says, — 

'Now a bubble bursts, and now a world.' 

But the bubble about to burst was a world. It 
had attained the most gigantic proportions, and 
shone with the most glittering hues. Speculation 
had, in joint-stock schemes, companies, mining 
adventures, wind bills, wild and visionary projects 
of every sort, come to its height, and, as it could 
neither climb farther nor stop where it was, it must 
come down, and with a vengeance. Lockhart, then 
in London, heard that the crash was at hand, — that 
the trade, and even Constable, was in danger. He 
hurried down to Chiefswood and told Scott his 
fears. Scott derided them at first, but, on reflec- 
tion, ordered his carriage and rode over to Polton 
where Constable dwelt, and was reassured for the 
time by the publisher's statement. The tempest, 
however, was only delayed for a season. 

Napoleon, meanwhile, was in progress ; but some- 
times Scott felt fagged with the researches neces- 
sary for it, and, in order to fill up the intervals of 
time when his historic ' line laboured and his words 



230 WALTER SCOTT. 

moved slow,' he began a journal in imitation of 
Byron's Ravenna Diary, with a transcript of which 
Murray had presented Lockhart, and Lockhart 
showed to Scott. Each is very characteristic of each 
poet. Byron's is reckless, rapid, careless in style, but 
extremely vivid in many of its touches, and has an 
air of thorough honesty throughout, although you 
think of a great mind going to pieces like a ship in 
a storm-drift. We are afraid that the keeping of a 
diary is, in most instances, a morbid symptom, and 
imagine that Scott, in the prime of his powers, 
would have disdained the collecting of such a dish 
of orts and leavings. Still his Journal is intensely 
interesting, and reveals, better than any biogra- 
phical statement could do, the hidden man, or 
rather woman, of his heart, — the amiable weak- 
nesses, the old sores and unforgotten sorrows, the 
palpitations of spirit, and incipient frailty of brain 
which the brave man concealed from the world 
under a firm and almost stern outward deportment. 
Even this did not afford his active mind a suf- 
ficient employment. At the suggestion of Con- 
stable, who knew that Scott used sometimes to 
carry on two romances abreast, and who was 
anxious that every minute of such valuable time 
should be occupied, he commenced another novel, 
to be taken up whenever Napoleon was standing 



DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN 231 

still and the Journal found inadequate. Hence 
Woodstock was begun. 

Scott's fortunes were now nearing the edge of a 
precipice. He knew it not. We of course do, 
and are disposed to linger before describing in the 
next chapter the terrible downfall ; and therefore 
we may spend the rest of this in culling, upon the 
verge, a few flowers, and thistles too, from his 
Journal, which is full throughout of matter, al- 
though it is a matter which gets drearier and 
darker every page. 

He finds one reason of his rapid intimacy with 
Moore in the fact, ' We are both good-humoured 
fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going 
forward than to maintain our dignity as lions ; and 
we have both seen the world too widely and too 
well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary 
consequence of literary people who walk with their 
noses in the air, and remind me always of the 
fellow whom Johnson met in an alehouse, and 
who called himself the " Great Twalmly, inventor 
of the floodgate iron for smoothing linen ! '" 

Here is a hint of his weakening constitution : 
' My pleasure is in the simplest diet. Wine I sel- 
dom taste when alone, and use instead a little 
spirits and water. I have of late diminished the 
quantity, for fear of a weakness inductive to a dia- 






232 WALTER SCOTT. 

betes, — a disease which broke up my father's 
health, though one of the most temperate men 
that ever lived.' 

Here is his estimate, not too severe, of the late 
Ugo Foscolo : ' Ugly as a baboon, and intolerably 
conceited, he spluttered, blustered, and disputed 
without even knowing the principles on which men 
of sense render a reason, and screamed all the 
while like a pig with a knife at his throat' The 
same Ugo seems, like Shelley's Sensitive Plant, to 
have ' desired what he had not — the beautiful ;' for 
we find one of his biographers describing him 
as surrounded in his lodgings by three lovely 
young women, hovering between servants and mis- 
tresses, — a Satyr attended by three Graces ! Yet 
he was a scholar and a poet. 

Here we find Scott in an ominous fix. 'I had 
a bad fall last night coming home. There were 
unfinished houses at the east end of Athole Cre- 
scent, and, as I was on foot, I crossed the street to 
avoid the materials which lay about, but, deceived 
by the moonlight, I slipped ankle-deep into a sea of 
mud (honest earth and water, thank God !), and 
fell on my hands. Never was there such a repre- 
sentative of "Wall" in Py ramus and Thisbe. I 
was absolutely rough-cast.' To T. S. Gillies he 
thus described what was probably the same acci- 



DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 233 

dent : ' One moonlight night I found Sir Walter 
standing in a newly-built street, apparently in a 
deep reverie. "I was considering," he said, "what 
it is best to do. I have been at one party, and 
was engaged to another ; but look at these habili- 
ments ! It happened by a most ludicrous chance, 
and to my own very great surprise, that I found my- 
self a few minutes ago lying at the bottom of a wet 
gravel-pit, from which I have just emerged ; and 
I believe it is indispensable to steer homewards 
and refit, otherwise the whole discourse at Lady 

's rout will consist of explanations why the 

unfortunate lion appears in such bad condition." 
And at this he laughed heartily.' His lameness 
began to get worse ; but that, too, he bore with 
the same equanimity that he did such penalties 
of popularity as he specifies in the following : 
1 People make me the oddest requests. It is not 
unusual for an Oxonian or Cantab, who has out- 
run his allowance, and of whom I know nothing, 
to apply to me for the loan of ^"20, ^50, or ^"ioo. 
A captain of the Danish naval service writes to 
me that, being in distress for a sum of money by 
which he might transport himself to Columbia to 
offer his services in assisting to free that province, 
he had dreamed I had generously made him a 
present of it. I can tell him his dream by con- 



234 WALTER SCOTT. 

trades. I begin to find, like Joseph Surface, that 
a good character is inconvenient.' 

The next is a kindly notice of poor William 
Knox, a nearly forgotten poet : ' A young poet 
of considerable talent died here a week or two 
ago. His father was a respectable yeoman ; and 
he himself, succeeding to good farms, became too 
soon his master, and plunged into dissipation and 
ruin. His talent then showed itself in a fine 
strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, The 
Lonely Hearth, far superior to that of Michael 
Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has been 
the life of his poems. I had Knox at Abbots- 
ford, but found him unfit for that sort of society. 
He scrambled on writing for booksellers, and living 
like the Otways and Savages of former days. His 
last works were spiritual hymns, which he wrote 
very well.' Scott was very friendly to Knox, 
and sometimes sent him ;£io at a time. We 
are familiar with some of his Biblical verses, which 
are sweet and sad, and resemble, at times, in his 
own words, 

' The harp-strings' holiest measures, 
When dreams the soul of lands of rest 
And everlasting pleasures.' 

Here is a characteristic touch : ' A stormy and 
rainy day. Walk it from the Court through the 



DECA Y AND DECADENCE BEGUN. 235 

rain. I like this ; for no man that ever stepped 
on heather has less dread than I of the catch-cold, 
and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, 
some of the high spirits with which in younger 
days I used to enjoy a Tarn o' Shanter ride 
through darkness, wind, and rain, the boughs 
groaning and cracking over my head, the good 
horse free to the road, and impatient for home.' 
Premature senility, nevertheless, comes out in the 
following optical delusion : ' When I have laid 
aside my spectacles to step into a room dimly 
lighted out of the strong light which I use for 
writing, I have seen, or seemed to see, through 
the rims of the same spectacles I have left behind 
me, — nay, at first put up my hands to my eyes, 
believing that I had the actual spectacles on.' 

Mingled with the following fine passage, the 
last we shall quote here, we fancy a certain dim 
foreboding or prevision of calamity : ' There is 
nothing more awful than to attempt to cast a 
glance among the clouds and mists which hide 
the broken extremity of the celebrated Bridge 
of Mirza. Yet when every day brings us nigher 
that termination, we would almost think our 
views should become clearer. Alas! it is not so. 
There is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be 
rent, before we shall see things as they really 






236 WALTER SCOTT. 

are. With the belief of a Deity, the immortality 
of the soul and of the state of rewards and punish- 
ments is indissolubly linked. More we are not 
to know; but neither are we prohibited from all 
attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn, 
sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scrip- 
ture are doubtless metaphorical ; for penal fires 
and heavenly melody are only applicable to 
beings endowed with corporeal senses. Har- 
mony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal 
of all gratifications of the senses, and as the 
type of love, unity, and a state of peace and 
perfect happiness. But they have a poor idea 
of the Deity, and the rewards destined for the 
just made perfect, who can only adopt the literal 
sense of an eternal concert, a never-ending birth- 
day ode. I rather suppose this should be under- 
stood as some commission from the Highest, some 
duty to discharge, with the applause of a satisfied 
conscience.' 

Lockhart says that Wilson might have been the 
best preacher of the age. We think that, in that 
department, had both tried it, as well as in poetry 
and novels, North would have had a dangerous 
rival in Scott. 




CHAPTER XIX. 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 




UT now, as Lockhart has it, 'the muffled 
drum was in prospect.' The fabric of 



prosperity which Scott had reared with 
such prodigious labour, and which seemed to him 
and others solid as Ben Nevis, was about to sink like 
a castle in the clouds, and to leave to the architect 
only the reality of ruin. We have neither inclina- 
tion nor sufficient knowledge of the ways of busi- 
ness to dilate at large on the particular causes and 
circumstances of the well-known catastrophe. A 
few remarks, founded on a perusal of the docu- 
ments on both sides of the controversy excited 
by Lockhart's Life, may, however, be adventured. 
Scott, as we saw before, had established a business 
as a printer and bookseller in connection with the 
Ballantynes. Owing to various causes, the book- 
selling firm was utterly unsuccessful. When wound 
237 



23S 1 T ALTER SCOTT. 

up, a vast amount of useless stock had been 
accumulated ; but this, by successive forced sales 
to Constable and others, Scott ultimately cleared 
off, and so paid the debts of the concern in full. 

After John Ballantyne's death, James Ballantyne 
and Scott entered into a new partnership, James, 
besides, acting as Scott's agent in procuring and 
paying money, which was accomplished, as is 
well known, by means of bills drawn for literary 
work done, or even to be do7ie, by Scott for the 
booksellers, but very frequently also by recourse 
to mere accommodation bills. The enormous 
expense of this system, the extravagance of Sir 
Walter's building schemes and style of living, 
the diminished sale and over-multiplied editions 
of the novels, and the complications of the whole 
business with Constable's firm, on whom most of 
these bills were drawn, paved the way for the 
tremendous smash, which was precipitated by a 
great commercial panic, — a panic in which the 
Bank of England itself shook like an oak in a 
tempest, — so that, on the failure of Hurst & Co. 
and Constable, which became certain on the 16th 
of January 1826, Scott found himself a debtor to 
the extent of about .£120,000, besides a personal 
debt of £ 1 0,000. 

In addition to this very general outline of the 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 239 

facts, there are two or three points to be noticed. 
In the first place, when Scott entered into partner- 
ship with the two Ballantynes, there was unques- 
tionably a certain inequality between the parties, 
Scott bringing not only (after a short while) more 
capital into the firm, but immense literary influ- 
ence, which procured a copious supply of work for 
the Ballantyne press. Still, secondly, the minor 
parties were by no means so inferior to Scott as 
Lockhart pretends. James Ballantyne brought 
some capital, and great talent both as a printer 
and litterateur, to the business. John had pleasant 
manners, accomplishments, vivacity, and enthu- 
siasm ; and both had unbounded attachment to 
Scott. Thirdly, Scott undoubtedly, as he had the 
chief share in raising, had also the chief share in 
ruining the original firm, effecting this by a number 
of unsaleable publications, partly his own, but chiefly 
by other hands, such as an ill-edited edition of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, a cumbrously got-up series 
of British Novelists, which Scott's interesting lives 
were not able to float, an able but heavy History 
of the Culdees, and the like. Fourthly, to stem the 
torrent of disaster he had himself in a great mea- 
sure let loose, Scott manfully and nobly strove ; 
and to the failure of John Ballantyne and Co. we 
owe some of the finest of his poems. Fifthly, 



240 WALTER SCOTT. 

Lockhart has in vain pretended that Scott was in- 
attentive to business, a ' magician wrapt in mists/ 
and so forth. The facts that he demanded in one 
instance fifteen per cent, for a sum of money he lent 
to the firm ; that he forced off, as we have seen, 
John Ballantyne and Co.'s bad stock upon Con- 
stable and other booksellers with whom he had 
transactions ; and that, notwithstanding his intricate 
and enormous money connections with James Bal- 
lantyne, he (although with no dishonourable pur- 
pose), without his knowledge, alienated his estate, 
mansion, etc., and settled them in 1825 upon his 
eldest son ; — these facts, and the whole tenor of his 
correspondence, prove, to say the least, a most minute 
and lynx-eyed, if not a self-seeking attention to his 
own personal interests, — more, certainly, than you 
might have expected in a poet. While, sixthly, not 
freeing the Ballantynes from blame in point of im- 
prudence and extravagance, they were in these 
respects left far behind by their illustrious partner, 
whose love for family aggrandisement, and whose 
passion for accumulating land, and for baronial 
hospitality, amounted to a degree of derangement. 
And, finally, whatever may be thought of the 
relative shares of fault contracted by the different 
parties in these complicated transactions, there can, 
we fear, be but one opinion as to the conduct of 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 241 

Scott's biographer. None but a Lockhart, the un- 
genial son-in-law of a most genial sire, could or 
durst defend a Lockhart's conduct in seeking to 
blast with scorn two men whom Scott had honoured 
with his confidence and affection ; who had shared 
in his success ; one, and, in a measure, both of whom 
had been ruined through their connection with him, 
and who idolized as well as materially served him. 
He that allows the biographer to be swallowed up 
in the satirist, who pollutes the stream of the record 
of a great man's life by foul and gratuitous per- 
sonalities, may be compared to the Oriental despot 
who offers up all the kindred of a deceased king as 
a propitiation to his Manes. Now Lockhart has 
done all this. In his reply to the first pamphlet 
published by the trustees of James Ballantyne, his 
usual talent deserts him, while it abounds in more 
than his usual hauteur ; the reasoning is as feeble as 
the language is coarse ; and his whole spirit reminds 
you of that of a pampered menial, who uses liberties 
of insolent language which his master would dis- 
dain. From the whole subject we may draw the 
conclusion, that the less a man of genius, however 
acute, entangles himself in the complications of 
this world's affairs, the better for his peace and 
prosperity. 

It is painful to watch the shadow of disaster 
Q 



242 WALTER SCOTT. 

slowly gaining upon the great orb, and to see every 
inch of the observation registered in his Journal. 
In vain did Constable make every effort to keep 
off the ruin, ' searching impossible places/ like Ford 
in the Merry Wives, proposing impossible measures, 
rushing to London, and there fretting, fuming, 
and plunging about in downright desperation. 
Scott must, on the 16th of January 1826, write 
thus : ' Came through cold roads to as cold news. 
Hurst & Robinson have suffered a bill to come 
back upon Constable, which I suppose infers the 
ruin of both houses.' He went that evening to 
dine with Mr. Skene, and appeared in his usual 
spirits. On going away, he whispered to his host 
to call on him next morning, as he had something 
to say to him. Skene called accordingly, and 
found Sir Walter writing in his study. He rose 
and said, ' My friend, give me a grasp of your 
hand ; mine is that of a beggar.' He was working 
at Woodstock ere he made this declaration ; and 
when Skene went away, he resumed it. And during 
that dark week, in which every post brought him 
tidings of some new calamity, he wrote several 
chapters of the novel. 

His mind was speedily made up. Instead of 
declaring himself bankrupt, as he might have 
done, he determined by his own exertions alone to 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 243 

liquidate all the bills accepted by Constable & Co., 
and bearing his indorsation. He said, ' My own 
right hand shall pay my debts.' He surrendered 
everything to his creditors. He reduced his estab- 
lishment, left dear old Castle Street, and took a 
lodging in St. David Street. With a quietness 
and depth of resolution almost unparalleled, he 
sat down under the darkened sky of his for- 
tunes, and proceeded, with a constitution prema- 
turely old, a heart wounded, and a brain partially 
enfeebled, to execute his vast literary projects. 
He had, besides, insured his life in favour of his 
creditors for ^"25,000, and signed a trust-deed over 
his own effects at Abbotsford, including an obli- 
gation to pay in cash a certain sum annually until 
the debts were liquidated. 

In all this he met with great and all but uni- 
versal sympathy. A few, indeed, of his creditors 
grumbled, and were disposed to recalcitrate, 
and some cantankerous persons out of that circle 
joined with them in this ; but the majority were 
kind and generous. Some people of wealth made 
him munificent offers of help, which he respect- 
fully but most decidedly declined ; and the feeling 
of the general public on the subject was healthy, 
and in a high measure kind. ' The author of 
Waverley ruined ! ' cried the Earl of Dudley. ' Good 



244 WALTER SCOTT. 

God ! let every man to whom he has given months 
of delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to- 
morrow morning richer than Rothschild.' 

During the crisis his Journal is full of melancholy 
entries. It, in fact, formed the safety-valve to those 
wretched feelings which he was able to conceal 
from the world under a look of stern and silent 
magnanimity. He says : ' I have walked my last 
on the domains I planted, sat the last time in 
the halls I have built. My poor people, whom I 
loved so well ! There is just another die to turn 
up against me in this run of ill-luck. If I should 
break my magic wand in the fall from the elephant, 
and lose my popularity with my fortune, then 
Woodstock and Boney (Napoleon) may both go 
to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking 
cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and 
intoxicate my brain another way. In prospect 
of absolute ruin, I wonder if they would let me 
leave the Court of Session. I would like, methinks, 
to go abroad, 

" And lay my bones far from the Tweed." 

But I find my eyes moistening, and that will 
not do.' 

Again : ' I have a funeral letter to the burial of 
Chevalier Yelin, a foreigner of learning and talent, 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 245 

who has died at the Royal Hotel. He wished to 
be introduced to me, and was to have read a 
paper at the Royal Society, where this introduc- 
tion was to have taken place. I was not at the 
Society that evening, and the poor gentleman was 
taken ill at the meeting and unable to proceed. 
He went to his bed, and never rose again ; and now 
his funeral will be the first public place I shall 
appear at. He dead, and I ruined : this is what 
you call a meeting.' 

He thus describes his first visit to the Court 
after his downfall : ' I went to the Court for the 
first time to-day, and, like the man with the large 
nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and 
my mishaps. Many were undoubtedly, and all 
rather regrettingly, some obviously affected. Some 
smiled as they wished me good-day, as if to say, 
" Think nothing about it, my lad ; it is quite out 
of our thoughts." Others greeted me with the 
affected gravity which one sees and despises at a 
funeral. The best bred just shook hands and 
passed on.' 

In reference to the meeting of his creditors he 
speaks in the following terms of his ancient and 
successful rival in love : ' Sir William Forbes took 
the chair, and behaved as he has ever done, with 
the generosity of ancient faith and early friendship. 



246 WALTER SCOTT. 

That house is more deeply concerned than most. 
In what scenes have Sir William and I not borne 
share together ! — desperate and almost bloody 
affrays, rivalries, deep drinking- matches ; and, 
finally, with the kindliest feelings on both sides, 
somewhat separated by his retiring much within 
the bosom of his family, and I moving little beyond 
mine. It is fated our planets should cross, though, 
and that at the periods most interesting to me. 
Down, down — a hundred thoughts.' The follow- 
ing will be understood and felt by many : ' Have 
set to work to clear away papers and pack them 
up for my journey. What a strange medley of 
thoughts such a task produces ! There lie letters, 
which made the heart throb when received, now 
lifeless and uninteresting, as are, perhaps, their 
writers ; riddles which have been read ; schemes 
which time has destroyed or brought to maturity ; 
memorials of friendships and enmities which are 
now alike faded. Thus does the ring of Saturn 
consume itself. To-day annihilates yesterday.' 

Calamities, like crows, fly in crowds. And this 
poor Sir Walter Scott now felt in his experience. 
His favourite grandson, John Hugh Lockhart, 
became unwell of the illness from which he never 
recovered. And, to put the copestone on all, his 
poor wife, who had long suffered under nervous 



UNIVERSAL SMASH. 247 

irritation, died at Abbotsford on the 15th of May. 
He was in Edinburgh at the time, but had visited 
her a few days before, and on the tidings of her 
death returned instantly. He describes his feel- 
ings as sometimes firm as the Bass Rock, and 
sometimes weak as the water that breaks on it. 
1 It is not,' he says, l my Charlotte, it is not the 
bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that 
will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, 
which we have so often visited in gaiety and 
pastime. No! no!' She was buried on the 22d 
of May ; and next day he says : ' The whole scene 
floats as a sort of dream before me : the beautiful 
day, the grey ruins covered and hidden among 
clouds of foliage and flourish, where the grave, even 
in the lap of beauty, lay lurking and gaped for its 
prey.' Surely his heart was entombed along with 
her ; and his body, too, has long been at her side. 
A week later we find him returned to Edinburgh, 
and resuming his ordinary labours, although now 
alone, and to be alone till the close. 




CHAPTER XX. 



'THE UNVEILED PROPHET.' 




WRITER in a forgotten magazine, dated 
1826, says something to the following 
%£$) effect : — ' There has the author of Wa- 
verley been the other day putting out Woodstock. 
The man has been often called a magician, but 
never so much deserved the name as now. How 
but by sorcery has he in these dreadful times, 
when money, credit, and confidence are all alike 
gone, been able to get £10,000 for a novel, by no 
means the best, either, of his productions?' The 
sum here is overstated, — it was only £8228 ; but 
the wonder, though lessened by several hundreds, 
remains great. The price undoubtedly was en- 
hanced by the competition among the booksellers, 
anxious, now that the Constable monopoly was 
broken down, to secure an interest in the most 

popular works of their time. The shock of sym- 
248 



1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET? 249 

pathy, too, produced by the news of Scott's mis- 
fortunes had its own share in increasing, for a 
time, the value of his productions. The novel con- 
sequently sold well, and its success came upon the 
author like a gleam of sunshine in a cloudy eve. 

About Woodstock the anonymous writer is cor- 
rect. ■ It by no means comes up to the first, no, 
nor yet to the second, nor yet to the third file 
of his fictions. It is in many parts exceedingly 
tedious. It ought to have embraced the period 
closing with the battle of Worcester, and had the 
Royal Oak for FINIS, instead of which 'the mere 
lees ' of that impressive story are ' left the vault 
to brag off.' The apparitions at Woodstock are 
managed with very little skill, not certainly as 
even Mrs. Radcliffe would have managed them. 
Scott admits himself that when he wrote the novel 
he had not the spirits to caricature the Puritans as 
he had done the Covenanters ; so, instead of making 
them ridiculous, he has made them simply loath- 
some. Witness Trusty Tomkins. And, above all, 
his picture of Cromwell, the greatest historical 
character he ever grappled with, is a failure. He 
halts between two opinions in his estimate of 
him ; and this irresolution is fatal to the power 
and fidelity of the likeness. Charles II., too, is 
a wretched daub. But there are many scenes 



2$o WALTER SCOTT. 

and passages of striking interest. The characters 
and connection of Sir Harry Lee and his daughter 
are exquisitely tender, — the more so if we suppose 
that Scott was here shadowing out his own family 
history. Bevis, the noble hound, is his own Maida ; 
and altogether, when we remember that the tale, 
like the fatal bark in Lycidas, was ' built in the 
eclipse,' we are astonished to find it built so well. 
It resembles the work of a blind architect, where 
faults are forgiven and merits exaggerated, on 
account of the circumstances surmounted and the 
difficulties overcome. He no sooner finished and 
launched Woodstock than he began The Chronicles 
of the Canongate. Frequently since his failure he 
had contemplated the possibility of taking refuge 
from his creditors in the ancient sanctuary of 
Holyrood, and this gave a strange charm to the 
Canongate, that fine old street opening upon it, 
and led to the conception of Chrystal Croftangry. 
We wish he had given us what we believe he 
at one time intended, a series of Tales of the 
Abbey. No one certainly could have thrown such 
vivid light as Scott upon the numerous paths of 
misfortune, carelessness, extravagance, and crime, 
leading so many victims to this Scottish city of 
refuge, defended almost superfluously, and conse- 
crated, too, by a royal palace, the giant-snouted 



1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 251 

crags of Salisbury, and the couchant lion of 
Arthur's Seat ! 

Napoleon, however, was still his magnum opus, 
and he devoted to it his more earnest and intense 
moments. He now carried on his labours, not 
merely in the morning before breakfast, which had 
long been his chief time for composition, but in the 
evening, as well as in the forenoon, to the great 
detriment of his health. Mr. Gillies says, ' I have 
always thought that to the domestic affliction, the 
painful impressions and incessant labours of the 
year 1826, was imputable the break of his consti- 
tution, although the injury was not then apparent. 
In St. David Street he kept earlier hours than 
ever ; and sometimes in one morning, before the 
meeting of the Court at ten o'clock, he had finished 
an entire sheet of twenty-four pages for the printer. 
His handwriting was now so small and cramped, 
that one of his ordinary quarto pages made at least 
double that amount in print ; " and, after all," he 
observed, "it was really no great exploit to finish 
twelve pages in a morning." But, on his return 
from the Parliament House, however wearied he 
might be, the task was again resumed. Seldom 
receiving any company, he scarcely sat a quarter 
of an hour at dinner, but turned directly to his 
writing-desk. Yet there never seemed the slightest 



WALTER SCOTT. 



flurry or irritation in his demeanour. He never 
seemed vexed or in a hurry, but took up the pen 
with a smile on his countenance, and as if he had 
been writing merely for his own amusement/ 

In this way, besides his ordinary tasks, he had 
found time for writing some very spirited letters 
on the monetary questions of that agitated period, 
under the nom deplume of ' Sir Malachi Malagrow- 
ther,' — letters which made a sensation, although 
not quite equal to the Drapier or to Junius. 
Almost his only relaxation all this dreadfully hot 
summer of 1826 was joining the Blair Adam Club 
for two or three days about the longest day, where, 
however, the heat compelled them to creep about 
and lounge under the shadow of great trees, and 
prevented any extended excursion. 

In October he interrupted, or rather varied his 
labours, by a journey, undertaken along with his 
unmarried daughter Anne, to London and Paris, in 
search of materials for Napoleon. At London he 
saw some of his old friends, and made a few new 
acquaintances. In Paris the honours of his Irish 
reception were renewed with interest. He describes 
the French as absolutely ' outrageous in their 
civilities,' and seemed as glad to get safe out of 
Paris as if it had been a forest of officious baboons. 
He bore it all, however, with great apparent equa- 






1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 253 

nimity. Cooper, the American novelist, was there 
at the same time. Hazlitt (who was also then in 
Paris, we think) describes the different behaviour 
of the two with his usual sarcastic vigour, — Cooper 
going about with his chin in the air, and assuming 
vast consequence as the 'American Scott,' while 
the real Scott was entirely untouched and unmoved 
amidst the palaver, seeing the usual sights, meeting 
with some famous people, and pursuing quietly the 
main purpose for which he had crossed the Channel, 
— the getting fresh materials for his book. Attend- 
ing the Odeon one evening, he found the play to 
be Ivanhoe. The story was sadly mangled, and 
the words nonsense, ' yet it was strange to hear 
anything like the words which I (then in agony of 
pain with spasms in my stomach) dictated to 
William Laidlaw at Abbotsford now recited in a 
foreign tongue, and for the amusement of a strange 
people. I little thought to have survived the com- 
pleting of this novel' 

In London, on his way back, he met Allan Cun- 
ningham, Theodore Hook, Croker, Peel, the Duke 
of Wellington, and many others. He dined once 
especially with Wellington, Peel, Huskisson, Mel- 
ville, and Canning, and on returning said, ' I have 
seen some of these great men at the same table 
for the last time] — words which seem in a twofold 



254 WALTER SCOTT. 

sense prophetic, since he never, we think, dined 
with any of them afterwards ; and since, owing to 
their divisions and separations, they seldom after- 
wards ever dined amicably among themselves. 
He sat at this time again to Lawrence, and was 
pleased with the portrait, as conveying the idea of 
' the stout blunt carle who cares for few things and 
who fears nothing/ He valued this journey as 
having caused ' his thoughts to flow in another 
and pleasanter channel' than for some time pre- 
viously. On his return to Scotland in the end of 
November, he took a house in Walker Street, Edin- 
burgh, and spent there the winter months, tor- 
mented with rheumatisms, which he had caught in 
France from damp sheets, and often sunk in deep 
depressions ; but, ill or well, serene or melancholy, 
always tugging on at the oar. 

We quote one or two painfully interesting pas- 
sages from his Journal of this year. On the last 
day of 1826 he held a little party: 'The Fer- 
gussons came, and we had the usual appliances of 
mirth and good cheer; yet our party, like the 
chariot- wheels of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, dragged 
heavily. It must be allowed that the regular re- 
currence of annual festivals among the same indi- 
viduals has, as life advances, something in it that 
is melancholy. We meet like the survivors of some 



1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 255 

perilous expedition, wounded and weakened in our- 
selves, and looking through diminished ranks to 
think of those that are no more ; or they are like 
the feasts of the Caribs, in which they held that 
the pale and speechless phantoms of the deceased 
appeared and mingled among the living.' Thus 
he describes a walk and what followed : ' Wandered 
from place to place in the woods, chewing the cud 
of sweet and bitter fancies which alternated in 
my mind, idly stirred by the succession of a thou- 
sand vague thoughts and fears, — the gay strangely 
mingled with those of dismal melancholy; tears 
which seemed ready to flow unbidden ; smiles 
which approached to those of insanity, — all that 
wild variety of mood which solitude engenders. 
Came in and assorted papers. I never could help 
admiring the concatenation between Achitophel's 
setting his house in order and hanging himself. 
The one seems to follow the other as a matter of 
course. But what frightens and disgusts me is 
those fearful letters from those who have been long- 
dead to those who linger on their wayfare through 
the valley of tears. What is this world ? a dream 
within a dream. As we grow older, each step is an 
awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from 
childhood ; the full-grown man despises the pur- 
suits of youth as visionary ; the old man looks on 



256 WALTER SCOTT. 

manhood as a feverish dream. The grave the last 
sleep ! No ; it is the last and final awakening.' 

The following is gloomier still : 4 Heard the true 

history of x (a suicide). Imagination renders 

us liable to be the victims of occasional low spirits. 
All belonging to this gifted but unhappy class must 
have felt that, but for the dictates of religion, or the 
natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolu- 
tion, there have been times when they have been 
willing to throw away life as a child does a broken 
toy. I am sure I know one who has often felt so. 
O God ! what are we ? Lords of nature ! Why, 
a tile drops from a house-top, which an elephant 
would no more feel than the fall of a piece of paste- 
board, and there lies his lordship ! or something of 
inconceivably minute origin, — the pressure of a 
bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain 
takes place, — and the emblem of Deity destroys 
himself or somebody else ! We hold our health and 
our reason on terms slighter than one would desire, 
were it in their choice, to hold an Irish cabin.' 

These extracts are rather in the mood of John 
Foster than of Walter Scott ; more like the gloomy 
misanthrope and ascetic than the broad, benignant 
Scottish Shakspeare, and seem to point to begun 
disease. And yet we could quote from his earlier 

1 This was, we think, Irving, Scott's early companion. 



1 THE UNVEILED PROPHET: 257 

writings passages sprinkled here and there of a 
similar purport, as where, in Waverley, he says, 
' If this compound of fools and knaves called the 
world be still in existence.' And it is singular how 
so many of his most powerful characters are soured, 
disappointed, and disrespectable beings, — gipsies, 
villains, smugglers, and caterans, — and might augur 
that he had, like Shakspeare, a dark sore deep 
sunk in his nature, which he relieved by creat- 
ing such queer, ambiguous, and somewhat savage 
people. Every castle of old had its dungeon, and, 
we suspect, every lofty mind has its deep misan- 
thropic pit, with plenty of sullen, waveless water, 
and many reptiles, living or dead, swimming or 
rotting within ; yet Scott mingled even his dark 
portraits with kindly elements, and his very devils 
are brown, not black. To show the good that is 
in evil characters is a more amiable task than to 
show the evil that is in good, or to make the good 
incredibly perfect. 

One splendid and gratifying incident occurred 
this otherwise disastrous season. This was the 
dinner of the Theatrical Fund, which took place 
on the 23d of February 1827, and at which he pre- 
sided. Lord Meadowbank, as it was the first time 
Scott had appeared at a public entertainment since 
his misfortunes, determined, after consulting him 

R 



258 WALTER SCOTT. 

in private, to give his health as 'the Author of 
Wavcrley? He did so, accordingly, in glowing 
terms. A storm of applause is said to have fol- 
lowed. A Glasgow litterateur present on the 
occasion says, on the contrary, that the applause 
was rather cold, and would have been much more 
enthusiastic had the toast been given in the capital 
of the West. Be this as it may, Scott's reply was 
in admirable taste ; and the last sentence must 
have brought down the house : ' I beg leave to pro- 
pose the health of my friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie 
(Mackay the Actor) ; and I am sure that, when the 
author of Waverley and Rob Roy drinks to the 
health of Nicol Jarvie, the applause shall be pro- 
digious! To which Mr. Mackay replied, 'My 
conscience ! my worthy father the deacon could 
never have believed that his son would have such 
a compliment paid him by the Great Unknown/ 
Lockhart adds a ludicrous thing. 'After resuming 
the chair, Scott sent a slip of paper to Patrick 
Robertson, begging him to confess something too ; 
why not the murder of Begbie ? but this, if done 
by the facetious Peter, must have been at a late 
hour of the evening.' We can imagine the solemn 
gravity with which Peter of the Painch would rise, 
like a penitent Sir John Falstaff, as if some awful 
birth of guilt were riving his continental bosom ; 



< THE UNVEILED PROPHET.' 259 

what profoundly ludicrous sorrow would sit upon 
his heavy features and half-shut eyne ; and how, 
after some beatings of breast and painch, sepulchral 
sighs, and genuine Burgundy begot tears, he would 
proceed, in tones as dolorous and guttural as those 
of his famous Gaelic sermons, to deliver himself of 
his dread secret ; and how, when from the Man 
Mountain in labour there sprang to light the old 
story of the robbery and murder at noonday of 
the bank porter, thunders of applause, dying away 
in convulsive laughter, would welcome the off- 
spring, and almost drown its parent as he sank 
exhausted in the chair! We can fancy all this,, 
and fancy, too, with what delight Scott would have 
witnessed it had he waited, and prided himself on 
being the grandfather of the joke of the evening ! 

The Waverley secret had ceased to be one from 
the date of the failure. It had been well kept, 
considering that twenty persons had been apprised 
of it. Scott says in his diary : * Funny thing at 
the theatre last night. Among the discourse on 
High Life below Stairs, one of the ladies' ladies 
asks, " Who wrote Shakspeare ? " One says, " Ben 
Johnson ;" another, " Finis." " No," said an actor, 
" Sir Walter Scott ; he confessed it at a public 
meeting t'other day.'" And thus the Prophet 
was at last unveiled. 




CHAPTER XXI. 



'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE.' 




REAT things had been expected of his 

Napoleon, at least by the general and 

distant public. They imagined that it 

would at once re-establish his fading fame and 

redeem his ruined fortunes. ' Napoleon to the 

rescue!' became the cry along the line of his 

wavering battle. The initiated, however, knew 

better. They were aware that the sum he might 

get for this work, however large, was a mere drop 

in the great bucket of his engagements, and they 

were aware of the difficulties with which disease, 

sorrow, bereavement, and his careless habits of 

composition, had environed his task. Some of 

them must have known that, although two years 

had elapsed since he began the work, the actual 

time consumed in the writing was hardly more 

than a year. And what a year of ' pain, sorrow, 
260 . 



"NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 261 

and ruin!' None less than a Michael Scott, or 
some similar supernatural personage, could have 
been expected in such a time to write a work 
worthy of such an author and such a subject. 
Wreathing ropes of the ribbed sea-sand, or splitting 
the Eildon Hills in three, were child's play to the 
task of recording worthily, in the course of a few 
hundred sittings, the career of the most marvellous 
man of modern times,— himself, too, the centre of 
the most multiform and marvellous events in the 
grandest of eras, — the ' man without a model and 
without a shadow,' whose flag for twenty years had 
been Victory, and his will Fate. 

In June 1827 Scott's Life of Napoleon appeared 
in nine volumes, and met, if not with a rapturous 
reception, with an enormous sale. It realized, first 
and second editions included, a profit of £1 8,000, — 
a fabulous sum in itself, but which, placed against 
his debts, was a wart to Ossa. Scripture critics 
speak of ' notes of time ' in portions of the ancient 
volume. Scott's Napoleon bore but too distinctly 
its note of time. Haste was visible in every page ; 
and this not the haste of his novels, in which he had 
been emptying his oldest and richest repositories, 
spreading out like the wise men of old his far- 
brought treasures, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, 
but the haste of one who loads his waggon with 



262 WALTER SCOTT. 

goods in one street to catch the market in another. 
Many of the descriptions, indeed, especially of 
battles, are worthy of the author of Marmion and 
Old Mortality; and the spirit of the whole, particu- 
larly in reference to Napoleon himself, is wonder- 
fully impartial. But altogether it ranks rather with 
compilations than with works of genuine history, 
and classes its author's name with the Smolletts 
rather than with the Humes and Robertsons of 
his country. In profound political and philo- 
sophical sagacity it is deficient. Of its sketches 
of individuals we remember none, unless where he 
speaks of Danton as a character worthy of the 
treatment of Shakspeare or Schiller, and as the 
1 Mahomet of the Revolution.' The style is in some 
parts exceedingly bald and careless, and in others 
too florid for narrative ; and the flowers have not 
the natural beauty and bloom of those in his earlier 
works. Burke was an older man than Scott when 
he wrote his Regicide Peace, and the figures in 
its style are as numerous, but they never seem 
to disguise weakness, always to augment as well as 
adorn strength. Indeed, Scott's book is not nearly 
so good, so clear, so compact, and so strong as 
Lockhart's own two little volumes of Napoleons 
Life published in John Murray's Family Library. 
William Hazlitt wrote shortly after Scott's work, 



'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 263 

and in almost avowed rivalship, his Life of Napo- 
leon. Hazlitt is a poor describer of battles, unless 
of racket and pugilistic contests, where he shines ; 
while Scott has the old cavalier blood in him, and 
evermore rises when he smells the battle afar off. 
Scott has always great ease, and sometimes a 
grand sweep of style, but has not that constant 
watchful, lynx-eyed intellect, like a whole com- 
mittee of vigilance in permanent session, which 
distinguished Hazlitt. There are no descriptions 
in all Scott's nine volumes to be compared to 
Hazlitt's pictures of the Reign of Terror, of the 
poetical power and charm of the Catholic religion, 
and of the Fire at Moscow. This last is specially 
fine. There is something, indeed, very grand in 
the thought of the two great elements, Fire and 
Snow, making common cause against this new 
Kehama or Man Almighty, and checking his pro- 
gress. Snow as an enemy in Russia he might have 
expected ; but Fire too — there was something he 
could not have calculated on, and which seems for 
the first time to have awed Napoleon's spirit. And 
how little he and his army look, first in the glare 
of the Kremlin, and then in the white boundless 
waste of the snow ! 

Apart from the splendid passages of Hazlitt's 
Life, it is a book which raises materially our esti- 



264 WALTER SCOTT. 

mate of his sense. There is less paradox and 
personal feeling than in his other writings, and a 
vast deal of strong, sagacious, weighty reflection. 
Having been himself a flighty thinker at times, he 
is excellent at exposing flightiness in others ; and 
Napoleon had a good deal of it blended with his 
great general soundness of judgment. 

The effect of Scott's book on the public was 
to produce a mixture of wonder, sympathy, con- 
siderable admiration, and much disappointment. 
Everybody read, few criticised it. Goethe, as we 
saw, stated the truth in saying that its chief value 
lay in its satisfying the interest felt as to the 
general impression which a career like Napoleon's 
had produced on such a mind as Scott's ; although 
a captious critic now, comparing Scott's fierce and 
vulgar abuse of Bonaparte in those letters, written 
during his brilliant career, with the estimate in the 
Life, might allege that the impression varied so 
much at different times as to be of less conse- 
quence. There would, however, be more captious- 
ness than sense in this criticism. Compare the 
abuse poured out by the Northern journalists on 
Stonewall Jackson and General Lee, while both 
were in arms, with the language of universal ad- 
miration, softening in the one case into a deeper 
feeling because the object is dead, which is em- 



' NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 265 

ployed to both now ! Scott only passed through 
a process which is as common in, as we think it 
is honourable to, human nature. 

After all that Scott, Lockhart, Hazlitt, Thiers, 
and a hundred others have done, the life of 
Napoleon is not yet adequately written, nor his 
portrait fully taken. We see only as yet a few 
scratches on the canvas, and dim outlines of the 
future photograph. It may never be done ; it can- 
not be done, we suspect, for long ages. The only 
man now alive who could have painted Napoleon 
with a force and fire, a sweep and mastery at all 
worthy of the subject, has devoted himself to other 
and surely not worthier heroes, such as Frederick 
the Great, — the life of whom, by the most powerful 
pen extant, must be pronounced a clumsy com- 
pilation, a colossal blunder, and might, were we 
using his own metaphorical language, be called a 
' Sphinx Swine,' the size enormous, the shape dis- 
gusting. Curious employment, certainly, that of 
Thomas Carlyle, with his almost last (authorial) 
breath inflating an unprincipled scoundrel, with the 
talents of a clever corporal or drill-sergeant and 
the habits of a satyr, into a hero, and the ' last of 
the kings !' Napoleon, whom Carlyle now abuses, 
had probably as many faults as Frederick, although 
of a less offensive kind ; but his genius was of a far 



266 WALTER SCOTT. 

loftier order, and his achievements transcendently 
greater. And when did Frederick ever blend such 
feeling, poetry, and common sense, as Napoleon in 
the following instance ? Talking in the park at 
Malmaison to one of his counsellors, he said, ' I 
was here last Sunday, walking out in this solitude 
in the silence of nature. The sound of the bells of 
the church at Ruel suddenly struck my ear. I was 
affected, so great is the power of early habit and 
education. I said to myself, What an impression 
must it not make on simple and credulous minds ! 
Let your philosophers, your metaphysicians reply 
to that : a religion is necessary for the people V 

Scott now stood relieved, as Atlas when Her- 
cules took his place under the weight of the heavens, 
from a tremendous load. New tasks he instantly 
undertook, but they all seemed easy to him after 
Napoleon. Lockhart and his family having come 
to spend part of the summer at Portobello, Sir 
Walter was often there in the long days of June, 
strolling along the beautiful beach, and inhaling 
the sea breeze. When the Court rose, he returned 
to Abbotsford, where Lockhart's household, too, 
were gone ; and there the Wizard might be seen 
riding through the woods with little John Hugh 
Lockhart, his grandson, and telling to him one of 
those stories from Scottish history which in the 



' NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 267 

evening or next day he was to write down for the 
whole world in his book already begun, Tales of a 
Grandfather. He was working, too, at his Chronicles 
of the Canongate. This summer the Blair Adam 
Club met in Charleston, Fife, and enjoyed some 
pleasant little excursions. Scott once more visited 
St. Andrews ; and while his friends climbed St. 
Rule's Tower, which his lameness and rheumatisms 
prevented him doing, he thus meditated : ' I sat 
down on a gravestone and recollected the first visit 
I made to St. Andrews, now thirty-four years ago. 
What changes in my feelings and fortunes have 
since then taken place, — some for the better, many 
for the worse ! I remembered the name I then 
carved in Runic characters on the turf beside 
the Castle gate, and I asked why it should still 
agitate my heart ? " Still harping on my daughter." ' 
His friends, however, came down from the tower, 
and the sad, delicious reverie fled away. 

While he was, soon after, at Minto, he heard the 
news of the death of Archibald Constable, who 
died utterly broken down by his misfortunes, and 
sketched him in his diary with generous fidelity. 
One curious thing he mentions about him : ( He knew 
the rare volumes of his library, not only by the eye, 
but by touch when blindfolded. Thomas Thomson 
saw him make this experiment, and, that it might 



263 WALTER SCOTT. 



be complete, placed in his hand an ordinary volume 
instead of one of these libri rariores. He said he 
had overestimated his memory, — he could not re- 
collect that volume.' Scott grants to him to have 
been the ' prince of booksellers ; his views sharp, 
liberal, and powerful ; too sanguine and speculative, 
but who knew more of the business of a bookseller, 
in planning and executing popular works, than any 
man of his time. He was generous, and far from 
bad-hearted ; in person good-looking (' The Crafty,' 
he said on another occasion, ' is a grand-looking 
chield, but not equal to Jupiter Carlyle'), but very 
corpulent latterly ; a large feeder and deep drinker, 
till his health became weak. I have no great 
reason to regret him, yet I do. If he deceived 
others, he deceived also himself.' Constable was 
only fifty-four, but looked ten years older. He 
died the occupant of an obscure closet called by 
courtesy a shop, in poverty and wretchedness ; and 
most of his great schemes had perished before him. 
Yet he must be remembered as long as the Edin- 
burgh Review and the Waverley Novels. 

In August died a greater man, who had also 
been closely connected with Scott, George Can- 
ning. We remember no eminent person of this 
century whose reputation is now so much a tradi- 
tion as Canning's. Byron said of him : ' Canning 



'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE: 269 

is a genius, — almost a universal one, — a wit, a 
statesman, and a poet.' But his speeches are 
forgotten, — all save a few bold strokes, such as, ' I 
called a new world into existence ' (by acknowledg- 
ing the South American States) ; his wit lingers in 
such scraps of sarcasm, of questionable taste and 
unquestionable bad feeling, as 'the revered and 
ruptured Ogden' (a worthy patriot, who had con- 
tracted a rupture while confined for a political 
offence) ; his poetry never deserved the name, 
and is now nowhere, unless in obsolete books of 
extracts, where you may find still his Knife- 
grinder, and his ballad of The German Studejit, 
who exclaims, — 

' Here doomed to starve on water gra- 
El, never shall I see the U- 
Niversity of Gottingen V 

Yet he was a most brilliant and a most useful 
man. His power over the Commons and country 
was immense ; his oratory at once refined and 
brilliant. As Scott says of him : ' No man possessed 
a gayer and more playful wit in society ; no one, 
since Pitt's time, had more commanding sarcasm 
in debate in the House of Commons. He was 
the terror of that species of orators called the 
"Yelpers." His lash fetched away both skin and 
bone, and would have penetrated the hide of a 



270 WALTER SCOTT. 

rhinoceros.' As a statesman, he was given some- 
what to intrigue, but had large views and progres- 
sive tendencies, although the Tories accused him, 
as they have since accused Gladstone and D'Israeli, 
of breaking down their ranks ; and certainly, as 
Falstaff has it, ' he led his rogues where they were 
well peppered.' As a man, although irritable, 
haughty, and not willing to work amicably with 
inferior statesmen, he was frank, if not always 
open, and often yielded, as in his defence of 
Queen Caroline, to generous impulses. When 
appointed Premier, he said the office was his 
by inheritance, and as he could not from con- 
stitution hold it more than two years, it would 
descend to Peel. But he did not enjoy it for 
even that brief space. He was hunted to death 
by the organs of the extreme party he had left, 
which openly shouted out, ' We are killing him;* 
and was mourned by Scott the more tenderly 
that he strongly disapproved of his latter policy. 
It is singular to find in Scott's Journal, immedi- 
ately after a feeling notice of Canning's death, 
the following sentence: 'My nerves have for 
these two or three last days been susceptible of 
acute excitement from the slightest causes. The 
beauty of the evening, the sighing of the summer 
breeze, bring the tears into my eyes, not un- 



'NAPOLEON TO THE RESCUE. 7 271 

pleasantly/ This was nature's untimely signal 
that he must at no distant day follow his great 
statesman friend. 

Before the close of the year he had two danger- 
ous rencontres, — the one with a vapouring French- 
man, General Gourgaud, who had taken offence 
at some statements in Napoleoris Life, and wished 
personal satisfaction, and another with Abud the 
Jew, who threatened him, on account of a debt, 
with incarceration ; but, as Bunyan would say, 
' the Lord being merciful to him, he escaped both 
their hands/ 




CHAPTER XXII. 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 



||1 HE vigorous rally made by Napoleon 
gyr had on the whole failed. Even had 
the work been as good in the historical 
style as Waverley was in fiction, we doubt if, at 
that stage of the business, it could have redeemed 
him. Its success would have probably led to a 
second effort, and, had that triumphed, the victory 
would have been bought by the author's life. 
More probably it would have been a failure, and 
Scott might have had to return to novel -writing 
over the ruins of his historical reputation. As it 
was, he was compelled to do this to some extent ; 
and most of his after efforts in novel - writing 
appear like the convulsive struggles of his own 
Dirk Hatteraick after he was mastered and bound, 
strong but ineffectual. 

272 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 273 

Early in the winter appeared the first series 
of the Chronicles of the Canongate, heralded by- 
one of Christopher North's splendid jubilates of 
applause in Blackwood. They were, however, 
rather coldly received by the public. At this 
we wonder, who look at them simply on their 
own merits, and do not remember that the 
generation of 1827 were compelled to compare 
them with their more brilliant predecessors. We 
land in France, and find a day warm, which the 
natives, contrasting it with the previous part of 
the week, vote to be somewhat dull and chilly. 
Scott himself liked The Highland Widow while 
writing it, and thought it written in his ' bettermost 
manner.' It is certainly a powerful Ossianic pro- 
duction, quite a prose poem ; and the style is grave 
and solemn as the ' stalk of the bold wolf in the 
harvest moon.' The Woman of the Tree has some 
slender resemblance to his Nomas and Elspeth 
Mucklebackits, but is on the whole as original, 
as powerful. And who can forget her exclamation 
over her lost son, ' My beautiful, my brave ! ' The 
others are spirited and varied tales. The Two 
Drovers is little more than a newspaper incident, 
but it is admirably told. In The Surgeoris 
Daughter Middlemas is an unredeemable and 
unnatural scoundrel ; and the part of the story 



274 WALTER SCOTT. 

described as passing in Scotland is commonplace 
enough. But the scenes in Hindostan, such as the 
story of the Indian whose bride is devoured by a 
tiger, and who keeps a life-long watch over her 
tomb, and the unveiling of Hyder Ali, are most 
excellent, and create the desire that Scott had given 
us a full-length portrait of that extraordinary man, 
and opened up a little more of the ' gloomy recesses' 
of a mind so ' capacious,' as Burke has it, of wild jus- 
tice and wide retribution, as well as of that severe 
and measured mercy which often mingled with it 
in his actions, and the descent of which resembled 
less the gentle rain from heaven than the first slow, 
large drops of a thunder shower. 

If The Chronicles, however, did not create any 
sensation, The Tales of a Grandfather, which came 
forth immediately after, did. They were welcomed, 
according to Lockhart, with greater rapture than 
any of Scott's productions since Ivanhoe. They 
extended his fame into a place where it had not 
got full footing before, — into the nursery, — and 
tended to confirm it in all other directions. Sir 
Walter now, for the first time, ranked with such 
enviable writers as the authors, many in number, 
of The Arabian Nights, and as Bunyan, Defoe, and 
Goldsmith, whose works are equally relished by 
boys and bearded men, and whose praise is per- 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 275 

fected out of the mouths of babes and sucklings as 
well as in the encomiums of critics, and in the 
thanks of all. At first, indeed, the language of 
The Tales is rather babyish even for babes ; but 
after a little practice the author finds out the true 
golden mean of style which, while children crow 
and clap their hands over it, glues elder people (as 
we are told of Sir Joshua Reynolds when reading 
The Life of Savage in a country inn) to the 
mantelpiece till their arms are stiff and cold. 
Often, when it appeared in its three small volumes, 
was it read at one sitting. It is often read at a 
single sitting still, and may be called the history of 
Scotland illuminated by a fairy's lantern, — so tiny 
and so true, so childlike and so real, the radiance 
it casts upon a story, romantic enough of itself, 
and which, even in its barest version, is stranger far 
than fiction. 

In the course of two years Scott had cleared off 
about ^"40,000 of his debt. Still the remainder 
loomed large before him. But now Cadell, who 
had been Constable's partner, and had recently pur- 
chased the copyrights of the Novels, projected, — it 
was a project worthy of Constable, and, indeed, 
was in its original germ his, — the Magnum Opus, 
i.e. a new, cheap, and uniform edition of the 
Waverley Novels, illustrated by eminent artists, 



276 WALTER SCOTT. 

and accompanied with notes from the pen of 
the author. This became ultimately a mine of 
wealth. 

The first announcement of Scott's literary labours 
in 1828 was that he had a volume of sermons in 
the press, — an announcement which sounded then 
as strange as though a few years ago Dickens had 
advertised a reply to Colenso. In spring, accord- 
ingly, there appeared a thin octavo volume entitled 
Religions Discourses, which we remember seeing 
when a boy in a parish manse that summer, and 
hearing highly commended by a respectable Estab- 
lished minister as good, sensible discourses, ' better 
than he expected from Sir Walter,' but did not 
read then, and have never met with since. They 
were written out of a kindly motive for a young 
man named Gordon, who had acted as Scott's 
amanuensis ; had studied for the Church, although 
labouring under an infirmity of deafness ; who got 
a presentation to a parish, but had been seized 
with a nervous dread of appearing before the 
presbytery to deliver the necessary discourses, — 
something like Cowper's terror at facing the House 
of Lords, — and came to Scott with tears in his eyes, 
telling him that his pen was powerless. ' Never 
mind,' said the kindly Scott, ' I'll write two sermons 
for you which will pass muster ;' and next morning 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 277 

presented him with them. They were not ulti- 
mately required, but Gordon retained them in his 
possession, and being pressed with pecuniary diffi- 
culties, sold them (after getting Scott's consent) 
for ^250, the largest price which had ever hitherto 
been paid for two sermons. They were published 
by Colburn, then the great vender of fashionable 
novels, and we suppose had a run alongside of 
Pclham, The Disowned, The Kttzzilbash, and the 
OHara Tales, with which that year his press was 
teeming. 

In March appeared The Fair Maid of Perth, the 
reception of which was, in Scotland at least, en- 
thusiastic. We remember in Glasgow, where we 
were then attending college, that the estimate of 
the press, — a press very ably conducted at that time 
by Sheridan Knowles, Malcolm, Kerr, Northhouse, 
and others, — was exceedingly high. It has undoubt- 
edly here and there an appearance of forcing and 
uneasy elaboration, but is on the whole a most 
successful production, with the genius great, but 
the art greater ; indeed, we may call it Scott's last 
real novel. It is full of spirit-stirring incident, of 
graphic painting, and of admirably portrayed 
character. In reference to its pictures of scenery, 
we often regret that the season selected is early 
spring, or rather winter, so that we have the 



-78 WALTER SCOTT. 

beauties of the Fair City and Loch Tay rather 
cast in statuary than revealed in the rich colours 
of painting. What he would have made of Killin 
in summer, and of Kenmore and Kinfauns in 
autumn ! The Highland funeral and the battle 
of the Inch are splendid descriptions, — the latter 
perhaps too frightfully accurate, although there 
gleams on us a raw and bloody glory from that 
field of desperate and all-devouring death, over 
which are echoing the cries, ' Another for Hec- 
tor! Death for Hector!' like accompaniments of 
thunder! Harry Wynd is a portrait drawn with 
a mixture of care and boldness worthy of Scott's 
very best days. Catherine Glover has character, 
though it is hardly the character of the time ; is a 
fair maid, but not the Fair Maid of Perth in that 
age. Louise is more true to her, perhaps to any, 
period. All the Court scenes ranging round 
Rothesay are powerfully pictured ; and his frightful 
death is artistically relieved by Catherine's tender- 
ness and his own patience. Conachar is a coward 
whom we pity more than we despise ; nay, pro- 
perly speaking, he is not a coward at all. Morally 
he is brave, constitutionally he is timid ; he unites 
a nerve of aspen with an heart of oak. It is him- 
self, not death, that he fears ; and his suicide seals 
not his disgrace, but his restoration to our respect. 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 279 

But Henbane Dwining is in our judgment the 
flower of the flock. He is the most original cha- 
racter of them all. Strange how he always suggests 
to our mind the image of Thomas De Ouincey, 
and seems to resemble him in his small stature, 
extremely complaisant, almost cringing manners, 
unsearchable eye, and transcendent powers, al- 
though De Quincey was an amiable man and a 
believer. Dwining, on the contrary, represents the 
last result of Materialism ; and to his eye frequent 
dissection of the human frame has reduced man 
to the level of a worm hacked to pieces by a 
schoolboy's knife. Yet he assumes a certain sub- 
limity of aspect from his powerful intellect and his 
worship of intellect, the contempt with which he 
regards the brutal desperadoes with whom he is 
nevertheless mixed up, and whom he uses as 
his tools, and from his undoubting conviction of 
his miserable creed. The Bohemian in Quentin 
Durward, avows himself an atheist, but he does so 
in a fierce defiant spirit, which may after all dis- 
guise a fear lest his creed be false ; but Dwining is 
cool, collected, absolutely certain of his, and dies 
with the sneer of its avowal sculptured upon his 
lips. How you tremble at the lean little incarna- 
tion of malignity, skill, cunning, sarcasm, infidelity, 
and intellectual pride, and at the 'he, he, he!' the 



2So WALTER SCOTT. 

fatal chuckle which proclaims his diabolic pre- 
sence ; and still more when he says to Catherine 
on the battlements of Falkland, pointing to Ra- 
morny's soldiers, who are turning traitors to him, 
1 These things thought themselves the superiors of 
a man like me ! And you, foolish wench, think so 
meanly of your Deity as to suppose that wretches 
like them are the work of Omnipotence!' Byron 
has been called the searcher of dark bosoms ; but 
Scott could search them too, although with a very 
different spirit and purpose from the other. 

After Scott had completed this tale, he set out 
for London, in or near which were his eldest son, 
his second son, Lockhart and his family, and 
where he spent six weeks, on the whole pleasantly, 
although little Johnnie Lockhart was still very 
unwell ; and this and other family distresses pre- 
vented him going much into general society. He 
saw, however, on this, as on former occasions, a 
good many distinguished people, such as Sir 
Robert Inglis, Sotheby, and Coleridge ; sat to 
poor Hay don, and also to Northcote, who re- 
minded him of an ' animated mummy ; ' dined 
and remained all night at Holland House • visited 
the Duchess of Kent, and was presented to the 
little ' Princess Victoria/ who, being then nine, 
must still have some faint recollection of the tall, 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 281 



lame, white-haired baronet, probably introduced 
to her as the cleverest man in the British empire. 
He says of her : ' This little lady is educating with 
much care, and watched so closely that no busy 
maid has a moment to whisper, " You are heir of 
England." I suspect that, if we could dissect the 
little head, we should find that some pigeon or 
other bird of the air had carried the matter.' 
And ere he went north he spent a pleasant day 
at Hampton Court, where his son Walter then 
resided, in the company of Samuel Rogers, Tom 
Moore, Wordsworth, and his wife and daughter, — 
Rogers presenting the Scottish poet with a pair 
of gold-mounted spectacles, and Scott valuing the 
gift and giver highly. 

This was the last visit paid by the unmutilated 
Scott to London. With some little infirmities, 
and although his eye had waxed dim, his natural 
strength was not yet abated. One slight symptom, 
however, of begun loss of memory he gave during 
this journey. Hearing Mrs. Arkwright singing, 
with great power and beauty, the lines, — 

' Farewell, farewell ! the voice you hear 
Has left its last soft tones with you ; 
The next must join the seaward cheer, 
And shout among the shouting crew,' — 

he said to his neighbour in the room, * Capital 



282 WALTER SCOTT. 

words, — whose are they ? Byron's, I suppose ; 
but I don't remember them.' He was astonished 
when I told him they were his own in The Pirate. 
He seemed pleased at the moment, but said next 
minute, ' You have distressed me. If memory goes, 
it is all up with me, for that was always my strong 
point.' Ere he visited London again, he was the 
mere wreck of what he had been in memory, mind, 
and body. When he returned to Scotland he 
recommenced his literary labours, and during the 
remainder of this year completed his second series 
of Tales of a Grandfather, wrote some interesting 
papers for The Quarterly, worked at the Magnum 
Opus, and commenced Anne of Geier stein. This 
novel was published in May 1829. Lockhart 
speaks of its being as well received as The Fair 
Maid of Perth. This is a misstatement. We 
remember its publication distinctly, and that a 
general feeling of disappointment prevailed. One 
of the cleverest students we knew in Glasgow 
College could with difficulty, we remember, read 
it through ; and we were prevented by his experi- 
ence from even making the attempt. The open- 
ing scene in the Alps we found afterwards, and 
find still, at every renewed perusal, magnificent, 
and shall not soon forget the picture contained in 
it of Pilate washing his hands in the ' Infernal 



STRUGGLES OF THE PROSTRATE. 283 

Lake' for ever in vain. But with this exception, 
and one or two other passages scattered through 
the book, it is a mere piece of senile garrulity, — like 
a long, endless story told by an old man half asleep 
in his easy-chair ; and the first chapter or two, 
contrasted with the rest, reminds us of one of the 
passes from the low country to the Highlands, 
very grand, but leading up often to dreary mono- 
tonies of desolation. Ten years before, Anne of 
Geierstein would have come out from his hands a 

' Child of strength and state ; ' 

and Switzerland would have hailed Scott as her 
novelist as indisputably as he had long been that 
of his native land. ' 





CHAPTER XXIII, 

THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 

Y the close of 1829 Scott had done a 
great deal more work. He had written 
the first volume of a History of Scot- 
land for Dr. Lardner's Cyclopcedia ; he had ready 
for publication by December the last of the Scot- 
tish series of The Tales of a Grandfather ; and had 
been working diligently at the prefaces and notes 
to the Opus Magnum. The sale of this last was 
most cheering. Ere 1829 was over, eight volumes 
had been issued, and the monthly sale amounted 
to 35,000 copies. This gave the prospect that, 
with the continuance of health and his usual capa- 
city of work, his debts in a few years would be 
entirely liquidated. 

But, alas ! although his industry could always 
be calculated on, his health now could not. Be- 
sides rheumatisms, symptoms of diabetes, — a here- 

284 






THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 285 

ditary trouble from which his father had suffered, — 
and other minor ailments, he complained for some 
weeks of headaches and great nervous irritation, till 
haemorrhage gave him a doubtful and ominous 
relief. Cupping became necessary, and he man- 
fully submitted to it, although he describes it as a 
' giant twisting about your flesh between his finger 
and thumb.' He felt for the time better than he 
had been for years before ; but his friends were 
alarmed, for they knew that the first preliminary 
blow of the axe of apoplexy had been struck. In 
his Diary, among its last entries this season, he 
records an interview, the first and last, with Ed- 
ward Irving. His description will interest more 
now than when it was first published : ' I met 
to-day the celebrated divine and soi disant prophet 
Irving. He is a fine-looking man (bating a dia- 
bolical squint), with talent on his brow, and mad- 
ness in his eye. I could hardly keep my eyes off 
him while we were at table. He put me in mind 
of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill 
did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize 
with the dark, tranquil features of his face, resem- 
bling that of our Saviour in Italian pictures, with 
the hair carefully arranged in the same manner. 
There was much real or affected simplicity in the 
manner in which he spoke. He spoke with that 



286 WALTER SCOTT. 

kind of unction which is nearly allied to cajolery. 
He boasted much of the tens of thousands that 
attended his ministry at the town of Annan, his 
native place, till he well-nigh provoked me to say 
he was a distinguished exception to the rule that 
" a prophet was not esteemed in his own country." ' 
There is a spice of prejudice in this picture, though 
we presume it is in the main true. We imagine 
Irving would not be quite at ease, or altogether 
himself, when meeting at a dinner party with 
Edinburgh lawyers, litterateurs, and fashionables. 
Had he met Scott alone, they would have taken 
to each other at once ; for Irving was the most 
genial of men, and as thorough a Scotchman as 
Sir Walter. Perhaps Scott, too, was under the 
influence of Lockhart, who speaks here of Irving 
' as deposed on account of his wild heresies,' and 
who, in a letter inserted in Mrs. Gordon's Life of 
Professor Wilson, talks of him as a mere quack, 
whose popularity was entirely owing to his atti- 
tudes and the tones of his voice. How differently 
the world rates Lockhart and Irving now ! And 
how all must regret that two such noble beings 
as Irving and Scott had not got into rapport with 
each other, — the one the great Border Preacher, 
and the other the great Border Poet, — both men 
of the warmest heart and the most exalted genius ! 



THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 287 

Tom Purdie died this autumn in a moment. 
Scott mourned his loss greatly. We gave before 
an extempore epitaph he proposed for him ; his 
more deliberate one, written by the heart as well 
as hand of his master, may be found over his 
grave near the Abbey of Melrose. 

Early in 1830 Scott published The Ayrshire 
Tragedy, a piece of some interest as a story, but 
not much poetical merit. On the 15th of February 
a tragic event occurred to himself. At two o'clock 
afternoon he returned home from the Parliament 
House, and while conversing with an old lady, 
a Miss Young of Hawick, who had called to show 
him some MS. memoirs of her father, a Dissenting 
clergyman of eminence in his day, sunk down, with 
a slight convulsion agitating his features. He ulti- 
mately fell at all his length on the floor, speechless 
and senseless. He was instantly bled, and then 
cupped, submitted to a severe regimen, and after 
some weeks he partially recovered. He resumed, 
of course, his pen, and became as busy as he 
had been in 1829, with Letters on Demonology 
and Witchcraft for Murray's Family Library, the 
second volume of his History of Scotland for 
Lardner, and the fourth series of Tales of a 
Grandfather on French History. All of them 
bore unmistakeable indications of the shock he 



288 IV ALTER SCOTT. 

had sustained, — unmistakeable now, although his 
contemporaries out of the circle of his own friends 
seem, while aware of the weakness of these pro- 
ductions, to have been ignorant of its cause. Thus 
we find even Wilson, in one of his Nodes, tearing 
the Letters on Demonology to pieces in a style 
which, savage as it seems at any rate, would have 
been cruel in the extreme had he known that they 
sprung from a diseased brain. The Phrenological 
Journal, on the other hand, discovered from the 
same production that Sir Walter Scott had no 
philosophical faculty, but added that neither had 
Shakspeare. Certainly neither Scott nor Shak- 
speare had in the same sense as George Combe. 
But we would have • credited these philosophers 
with more acuteness had they discovered from 
these Letters that Scott's brain was not in a normal 
state. Toward August he had very much rallied, 
and wrote a pleasant review of Southey's Life and 
edition of John Bunyan. 

In June died George IV., who, whatever were 
his relations to the country, had certainly been 
Scott's warm friend. Before his death, hearing 
that Sir Walter was to retire from the clerkship, 
he suggested that he might come to London to 
spend the winter, and overlook the MS. collections 
of the exiled house of Stewart, which had come 



THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 289 

into the King's hands by the death of the Car- 
dinal of York. Scott heard of this gladly ; but 
when offered the rank of privy councillor, he, as 
Dickens too has since done, at once and decidedly 
refused. 

When the term ended in July, Scott ceased to 
be a Clerk of Session, but was told that, in lieu 
of his salary, ^"1300, he should have a retiring 
allowance of £800. He received also an intima- 
tion from the Home Secretary that the Ministry 
were prepared to give him a pension covering the 
difference. He laid the matter before his creditors, 
who advised him to consult his own feelings in the 
matter. In fine, he declined respectfully, acknow- 
ledging the intended favour, but declaring that he 
would accept of no more than had been allowed 
to his former colleagues, over whom he did not 
feel himself entitled to preference. 

He received this eventful summer — was it leap- 
year ? — an offer of marriage from a lady of rank, 
which he somewhat roughly declined to her brother, 
who had been the medium of the communication. 
Yet probably, worn out, diseased, and only recover- 
ing from ruin, lame, half-blind, and deaf, his con- 
stitution twenty years older than his years, he may 
have felt flattered by the proposal, the lady being 
young and wealthy. But although he felt, he never 






290 WALTER SCOTT. 

acted on flattery ; and his mind was made up, he 
tells us, to regard woman as no more to him than 
her picture. Instead of yielding to the siren 
strains of the present, he was ever recurring to 
the past. We find him, for instance, writing thus 
in his Journal : ' I went to make a visit, and fairly 
softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling 
old stories, till I was fit for nothing but shedding 
tears and repeating verses for the whole night. 
This is sad work. The very grave gives up the 
dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to 
my perplexities. What a romance to tell ! and 
told, I fear, it will one day be. And then my three 
years of dreaming, and my two years of wakening, 
will be chronicled doubtless. But the dead will 
feel no pain.' Again, three days afterwards : ' At 

twelve" I went again to poor Lady - to talk 

over old stories. I am not clear that it is a right 
or healthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores ; 
but it seems to give her deep-rooted sorrow words, 
and that is a mental blood-letting. To me these 
things are now matter of calm and solemn recol- 
lection, never to be forgotten, and yet scarce to 
be remembered with pain.' Somehow- the pain the 
reader feels connected with these entries points to 
the grave of poor forgotten Charlotte Carpenter, 
the wife of his youth, and the mother of his 



THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 291 

children. But Scott was of imagination all com- 
pact ; his brain, too, was affected ; and, as a poet 
in decay, he must be forgiven and deeply pitied 
too. 

When the Court rose, he went to Abbotsford, 
which acrain seemed to have resumed its ancient 
glory and happiness. Lockhart and his wife and 
family were once more in Chiefswood ; William 
Laidlaw had returned to Kaeside. There was 
now, indeed, no Tom Purdie to lean upon in his 
walk through the woods ; but he had his pony 
Douce Davie to ride on, and his grandchildren to 
surround him on donkeys as he rode. And the 
woods were green this moist summer, and he 
thought them again as soon to be his own. 
Report had magnified the success of the Mag- 
num; his debts were generally believed to be 
paid ; and once more, where the carcase was, 
the eagles were gathered together. The table 
of Abbotsford was surrounded as deeply as ever 
by distinguished guests ; and Scott, although he 
now passed the bottle himself, and sipped his 
toast-and-water, had much of the old jollity of 
' mine host,' and found his friends in mirth as 
well as in meat and wine. Few suspected that 
he was all the while sinking more and more daily 
into the arms of his disease, and that, while he was 



292 'WALTER SCOTT. 

writing as much as ever, his pages were beginning 
to smell of decay, like the last sodden leaves of 
autumn. 

Cadell came out one September day with his 
' horn filled with good news.' By October, he told 
Scott, the debt was to be reduced to ^60,000, 
about one-half of its original amount. One object 
of this visit was to induce Sir Walter to confine 
himself entirely to the notes and prefaces of the 
Magnum and let novel-writing alone. He sug- 
gested also to him that he should employ some 
time in drawing up a catalogue of the most rare 
and curious articles in his library and museum. 
Next morning, on this hint, he spake and began 
dictating to William Laidlaw a book, entitled, 
' Reliquiae Trottcosienses, or the Gabions of Jona- 
than Oldbuck.' But after a few days he threw it 
aside, and reserving it for hours of leisure, he com- 
menced a romance. This was Count Robert of 
Paris, destined to be the last and least of his long 
line of fictions. As he had now with the weakness 
much of the obstinacy of a child, all opposition was 
in vain. The usual agreements for publication were 
made, and the story proceeded. 

Lockhart expresses pity for Scott's friends at 
this crisis and afterwards. We share in this feel- 
ing, and particularly for William Laidlaw. How 



THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 293 

different the circumstances when he wrote at Scott's 
dictation in 1819-20 and now ! Then Scott was in 
disease, now in decay. Then the sturdy oak was 
shaken by a tempest ; now it was stooping heavy- 
laden under infirmities, and its proud apex touched 
the ground. Then, as the author warmed with his 
theme, spirit triumphed over matter, and, after 
demoniac tortures, there was an angelic birth ; 
now the flow of the thought was free and full in 
general, but the result was feeble. Then Laid- 
law's feeling, as he contrasted the pained Titan 
with the glorious product, was delighted astonish- 
ment ; now pity and sorrow predominated, especi- 
ally when at times the mighty Wizard seemed to 
have dropped his wand, lost his way,. and, instead 
of seeing the invisible, saw nothing but clouds and 
thick darkness. It seemed a transfiguration in- 
verted, — a god turning into a man, — a giant dwind- 
ling into a dwarf; and it might be said of this 
strong man, like Sisera of old, 'At his feet he 
bowed, he fell, he lay down ; at his feet he bowed, 
he fell ; where he bowed, there he fell down dead.' 
And Laidlaw such an idolater too ! We wonder 
his pen was not petrified, — it surely sometimes 
trembled. And how Scott must have missed those 
interjections of praise, ' Eh, sirs ! heard ye ever 
the like o' that !' which were wont to burst from 



294 WALTER SCOTT. 

the lips of the enthusiastic henchman, and to cheer 
him on his task. Now there was a sad silence, 
broken only by the voice of the author, waxing 
feebler and lower every hour, and by the racing 
over the paper of the amanuensis' reluctant and 
hurrying pen. 

The times were not of the kind to infuse new 
energy into Sir Walter, or to recall old. The 
three days at Paris had uttered their voice, and 
all Europe, Britain included, were returning it in 
assenting or angry echoes. Charles X. had taken 
refuge in Holyrood, and was even there so in- 
secure that Scott had to write a letter to the 
newspapers, imploring for him common courtesy 
and respect The Whig Government was big with 
the Reform Bill. Scott became greatly agitated, 
and threw out his agitation into a political pam- 
phlet, which had of course plenty of zeal, but was 
exceedingly feeble in composition, and which his 
friends strongly condemned, and with some dif- 
ficulty persuaded him to destroy. 

Previous to this he had another slight touch 
of apoplexy, which was followed by others ; and 
greater severity of regimen, and abstinence from 
work, were enjoined on him by his physicians. 
Cadell and James Ballantyne had been compelled 
to condemn Count Robert as altogether unworthy 



THE STRONG MAN BOWED DOWN. 295 

of his reputation. Frightened, however, almost 
out of their senses by his political pamphlet, they 
were driven in despair to advise him to return to 
his novel ; and this, nothing loath, he consented 
to do. 1830 closed in one point well with Scott. 
In December his creditors, gratified by the success 
of the Magnum, presented him with his furniture, 
plate, linen, paintings, library, etc., — an act which 
gave him great satisfaction. 

His debt was now reduced to .£54,000. The 
Magnum, notwithstanding the disturbed state of 
the country, continued to flourish, its sale being 
scarcely at all diminished. When told of what the 
creditors had so handsomely done, he thought his 
affairs in such a satisfactory state that he deter- 
mined to execute his last will, which he did the 
next year. 

He resumed his Journal, and on the 20th of 
December we find him saying : ' Ever since my 
fall in February I have seemed to speak with an 
impediment. To add to this, I have the constant 
increase of my lameness. I move with very 
great pain, and am at every minute, during an 
hour's walk, reminded of my mortality. My 
fear is lest the blow be not sufficient to destroy 
life, and that I should linger on " a driveller and 
a show."' He often repeated the lines in Johnson's 






296 WALTER SCOTT. 

Vanity of Human Wishes, of which this is an 
extract, — 

1 From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.' 




CHAPTER XXIV. 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 




COTT closed his Journal for 1830 gloomily. 
He opens it for 1831 in language more 
melancholy still: — 'January 1st, 1831. 
I cannot say the world opens pleasantly for me 
this new year. There are many things for which I 
have reason to be thankful, especially that Cadell's 
plans seem to have succeeded, and he augurs that 
the next two years will nearly clear me. But I 
feel myself decidedly wrecked in point of health, 
and am now confirmed that I have had a paralytic 
touch. I speak and read with embarrassment, and 
even my handwriting seems to stammer. This 
general failure, 



With mortal crisis doth portend 
My days to appropinque an end." 



I am not solicitous about this. Only, if I were 

297 



29S WALTER SCOTT. 

worthy, I would pray God for a sudden death, and 
no interregnum between. I cease to exercise 
reason, and I cease to exist.' 

On the 31st of January he went to Edinburgh 
to execute his last will. At Mr. Cad ell's, where he 
lived, he saw some articles of furniture which had 
belonged to his house in Castle Street, and the 
sight of them moved him deeply. He wrote in the 
mornings at Count Robert, and sometimes saw an 
old friend, Clerk, Skene, or Thomson, at a quiet 
dinner. On the 4th of February the will was 
signed. A storm of snow had detained him in 
town ; but when the thaw came he returned to 
Abbotsford. 

The times continued portentous ; and when a 
meeting of freeholders was called in March in 
Jedburgh, to discuss the Reform Bill, he, to the 
great alarm of his daughter, determined to attend 
and speak on the Tory side. His tone was low, 
and his utterance hesitating. At one point of the 
speech, the crowd who had filled the courthouse 
hissed and hooted. He became silent, but when 
the interruption ceased resumed his speech. Again 
they broke out into clamour. He abruptly and 
unheard proposed the resolution, and then, turning 
to the crowd, said, a glow of indignation passing 
over his face, ' I regard your gabble no more than 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 299 

the geese on the green.' He soon, however, re- 
covered his equanimity, and as he retired bowed to 
the assembly. Two or three renewed their hissing ; 
he bowed again, and added, as he took leave, in the 
words of the doomed gladiator, ' Morilurus vos 
saluto! 

Still he was labouring on, invitee Minerva, at his 
novel. When Dr. Abercromby remonstrated, he 
replied : ' As for bidding me not work, Molly 
might as well put the kettle on the fire and say, 
"Now don't boil!" To another of his friends who 
used similar language he said : ' I understand you, 
and I thank you from my heart ; but I must tell 
you at once how it is with me. I am not sure that 
I am quite myself in all things, but I am sure that 
in one point there is no change. I mean, that I 
foresee distinctly that if I were to be idle I should 
go mad. In comparison with this, death is no risk 
to shrink from.' For months he abstained from 
wine and similar stimulants. One day, however, 
having given a dinner party, where Lord Meadow- 
bank was present, he neglected the prescriptions of 
his physician, and took two or three glasses of 
champagne, and was seized, on retiring for the 
evening, with another severe shock of paralysis, 
which forced him to keep his bed for days, and 
changed his appearance in the most lamentable 



300 WALTER SCOTT. 

manner. When he got a little better, he resumed 
and recast his novel ; and there was something 
sublime yet ghastly in beholding this mere wreck 
of a man, after several apoplectic seizures, and ill 
besides with cramp, rheumatism, gravel, and in- 
creasing lameness, still struggling shorewards 
against the breakers, and keeping his eye upon 
Laidlaw as his faithful pilot. On the 18th of May 
he says : ' Went to Jedburgh greatly against the 
wish of my daughter. The mob were exceedingly 
vociferous and brutal. Henry Scott was elected 
for the last time, I suppose. Troja fuit. I left 
the borough in the midst of abuse, and the gentle 
hint of " Burke Sir Walter." Much obliged to the 
brave lads of Jeddart !' 

He now, after the elections with their turmoil 
were over, got a little better ; but no sooner felt 
himself in a measure restored than he commenced 
a new romance, Castle Dangerous. Lockhart was 
with him at the time, and in order to see the scenery 
of the novel, the twain set out on an excursion to 
Lanarkshire, passing on the way his dear old places, 
Yair, Ashestiel, Inverleithen, and Traquair. During 
his journey to Douglas Mill, Lesmahagow, and 
Castle Dangerous, he was in a state of great nervous 
excitement, repeating poetry from Winton, Bar- 
bour, and Blind Harry. He met with an old friend, 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 301 

Borthwickbrae, also suffering under paralytic affec- 
tion. They had a joyous, too joyous a meeting; 
and next day Scott was informed that his friend 
had had another severe stroke, and was despaired 
of. He was greatly struck, and insisted on going 
home immediately, saying, ' I must home to work 
while it is called to-day, for the night cometh when 
no man can work. I put this text many a year 
ago on my dial-stone.' (Dr. Johnson inscribed the 
same on his watch-seal.) He set out straightway, 
and never rested till he reached Abbotsford. 

Returned, he finished Castle Dangerous and Count 
Robert. Shortly after it was suggested that he 
should spend the next winter in Italy. His son 
Charles was attached to the British legation at 
Naples, and to Naples his heart naturally turned. 
The kind and indefatigable Basil Hall, learning 
Scott's intentions, wrote Sir James Grahame, 
without Scott's knowledge, suggesting that the 
King's Government should place a frigate at his 
disposal for his voyage to the Mediterranean. Sir 
James at once and in the handsomest manner con- 
sented. Scott was gratified, and said he was glad 
to find things were still in the hands of gentlemen. 
He resolved to remain at Abbotsford till Septem- 
ber, and make himself as happy as he could, re- 
visiting the principal points of interest in the valley, 



302 WALTER SCOTT. 

calling on his old friends, and gathering as many 
around him as possible. Thus engaged, and freed 
from the drudgery of authorship, his spirits and 
health revived wonderfully. 

On the 17th of September James Glencairn 
Burns, returned on furlough from India, along with 
MacDiarmid of Dumfries, visited Abbotsford ; and 
once more, and for the last time, a party was held, 
and a most delightful day ensued. We quote some 
of the verses which Lockhart wrote on the occa- 
sion, which are really good : 

' A day I've seen whose brightness pierced the cloud 

Of pain and sorrow ; both for great and small 
A night of flowing cups and pibrochs loud,, 

Once more within the Minstrel's blazoned hall. 
Upon this frozen hearth pile crackling trees, 

Let every silent clarshach find its strings ; 
Unfurl once more the banner to the breeze, 

No warmer welcome for the blood of kings ! 
What princely stranger comes ? what exiled lord 

From the far East to Scotia's strand returns, 
To stir with joy the towers of Abbotsford, 

And wake the Minstrel's soul ? — the boy of Burns. 

1 The children sang the ballads of their sires. 

Serene among them sat the hoary knight ; 
And if dead bards have ears for earthly lyres, 

The peasant's shade was near, and drank delight. 
As through the woods we took our homeward way, 

Fair shone the moon last night on Eldon hill, 
Soft rippled Tweed's broad wave beneath her ray, 

And in sweet murmurs gushed the Huntly rill. 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT 303 

Heaven send the guardian genius of the vale 

Health yet, and strength, and length of honoured days, 
To cheer the world with many a gallant tale, 

And hear his children's children chant his lays. 
Through seas unruffled may the vessel glide 

That bears her poet far from Melrose glen ; 
And may his pulse be stedfast as our pride, 

When happy breezes waft him back again/ 

Wordsworth came and took farewell of him, and 
wrote then the beautiful sonnet : 

' A trouble not of clouds, nor weeping rain, 

Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 

Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height ; 
Spirits of power assembled there complain, 

For kindred power departing from their sight, 
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, 
Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 

Lift up your hearts, ye mourners, for the might 
Of the whole world's good wishes with him go ; 

Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 

Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true, 
Ye winds of ocean and the midland sea, 

Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope.' 

On the 23d September, Scott, accompanied by 
his daughter Anne and Lockhart, set out for Lon- 
don. They spent one day at Rokeby, and Scott 
took a solemn farewell of his ancient friend Mor- 
ritt. They reached London on the 25 th of the 
month, and found it in a state of terrific excite- 
ment connected with the rejection of the Reform 



3 04 WALTER SCOTT. 

Bill, — the Duke of Wellington's house having suf- 
fered along with some others from a popular 
eruption. 

During the month he was in London, Scott went 
very little into society, although he saw a few 
old friends. He was very far indeed from being 
well, yet Sir Henry Halford and Dr. Holland, 
while recognising incipient disease of the brain, 
thought that with great care and complete abstin- 
ence from literary labour he might recover. 

Moore, Milman, Sir David Wilkie, and Washing- 
ton Irving saw him sometimes in the evenings. 
Croker rose from his seat at dinner to make one 
of his brilliant speeches against the Scottish Re- 
form Bill, and said that Scott's company had in- 
spired him. But his most frequent visitor was one 
he had known but slightly before, Sir James Mac- 
kintosh. He as well as Scott was in delicate 
health, — both, indeed, were prematurely arrived at 
second childhood, — and whenever they met, the 
dear old men ! their conversation, wherever it 
might begin, was sure to fasten ere long upon 
Lochaber. When in Edinburgh he had given 
orders to erect a monument to Helen Walker, the 
prototype of Jeanie Deans, in the churchyard of 
Irongray, her native parish. He now, before start- 
ing on his journey, wrote that fine epitaph on her, 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 305 

which may be read, as we read it once on a lovely 
autumn day, on the monument standing in the 
centre of its wood, the Cluden murmuring near, 
and which for exquisite simplicity has few rivals in 
the literature of the churchyard. 

We can conceive no event more interesting and 
suggestive than a visit from Scott to the Medi- 
terranean in the prime of his health and powers. 
Although Scandinavia and the North might, in 
some respects, have been more congenial to his 
Scald-like genius, yet Italy too, and Malta, had 
very great attractions to him as a lover of chivalry 
and a worshipper of nature. How, had he gone 
abroad ten years previously, would he have en- 
joyed 

' The Alps and Apennine, 
The Pyrenean, and the river Po ;' 

the blue sweep of the Mediterranean, with the 
mountains of Africa seen in the distance ; the Bay 
of Naples, with Vesuvius as a pillar of fire and 
cloud towering above it ; the Cities of the Dead ; 
Rome, the capital of the Catholic world and the 
grave of the ancient ; the Rhine singing its old 
psalm in the ears of Europe with changeless 
and unwearied melody ; Frankfort, where Goethe 
was born ; — what living power would Scott have 
brought to and derived from these time-hallowed 



3o6 WALTER SCOTT. 

scenes ! what materials for superb fiction would he 
have accumulated ! How his expectations would 
have been exceeded, and his imaginative dreams 
been verified ! But now, alas ! in his enfeebled 
state, while going to see the ruins of empires, 
he seemed carrying dust to dust, and ashes to 
ashes. 

On the 29th of October, in company with his 
son and two daughters, he sailed from Portsmouth 
in the Barham. He was sick, like everybody else, 
in the Bay of Biscay ; but when it was passed, he 
got on deck and greatly enjoyed the feeling of the 
air, the sea scenery, and the arrangements of the 
frigate, which were admirable. The vessel seemed 
his yacht. It 'wandered at his own sweet will,' 
often altering its course to allow him to see some 
famous place, and would have halted at Algiers 
had not a favourable breeze arisen. There had 
shot up, some few months before, from the depths 
of the sea, as if to salute the mighty Wizard as he 
passed, a submarine volcano. It had lingered its 
allotted time, got a name, ' Graham's Island/ and 
was beginning to crumble down into the ocean 
again when Scott arrived. Nothing would pre- 
vent him landing on it ; and he was soon seen 
limping over its lava with all his old agility, find- 
ing on it two suffocated dolphins and one starved 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 307 

robin redbreast ; looking down into its tiny crater 
and breathing its brimstone gales, and coming on 
board again with no other trophy than a nautilus 
shell he had found, and meant to turn into a fairy 
cup. On this subject a most interesting painting 
might be founded, — Sir Walter Scott on Graham's 
Island. It was a meeting of two worn-out and 
half-quenched volcanoes on the lone salt deep : 
full of cold scoriae ; fires going out in steam and 
smoke ; creations dead ; footing uneasy and full 
of dreary chasms ; both crumbling and soon to 
disappear in the immeasurable abyss. Alike, 
Scott and Byron, were lighted on their last pil- 
grimage by volcanic fires, — Scott by the dull 
embers of this smouldering island, Byron by the 
fresh flames of Lipari, — both pointing to doom, to 
death without return, or to a return more disastrous 
still. 

At Malta Scott found himself very much at 
home, — in the midst of old friends, such as Hook- 
ham Frere, who was residing there, ' the captive of 
the enchanting climate and the romantic monu- 
ments of the old chivalry ;' Sir John Stoddart, chief 
judge of the island, who had known Scott in his 
early and happy days, when Lasswade was his 
real and Glenfinlas his imaginary home ; and Dr. 
John Davy, brother of the great chymist. He spent 



30S WALTER SCOTT. 

much of his time in visiting La Valetta with its 
knightly antiquities, the church and monuments of 
St. John, and the deserted palaces and libraries of 
the Knights of Malta. He met a lady, too, here, 
a Mrs. John Davy, daughter of a brother advo- 
cate, — a Mr. A. Fletcher, whose house had stood 
close to 'poor dear 39/ as he called his own old 
house in Castle Street. This lady, who watched 
him with all the truth of a woman's eye and the 
tenderness of a woman's heart, has left in her 
diary some pleasingly pathetic glimpses of the 
faded but amiable poet as she saw him at Malta, 
and contrasted him with the Scott she had known 
in Scotland only five or six years before : ' His 
articulation was manifestly affected, though not, I 
think, quite so much so as his expression of face. 
He wore trousers of the Lowland small-checked 
plaid, and, sitting with his hands crossed over the 
top of a shepherd-like staff, he was very like the 
picture painted by Leslie and engraved for one of 
the annuals ; but when he spoke, the varied expres- 
sion that used quite to redeem all heaviness of 
features was no longer to be seen. . . . Hearing the 
sound of his voice as he chatted sociably with Mr. 
Greig, on whose arm he leaned while walking from 
the carriage to the door of the hotel, it seemed to 
me that I had hardly heard so homelike a sound 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 309 

in this strange land, or one that took me so back 
to Edinburgh and our own Castle Street, where I 
had heard it as he passed so often. Nobody was 
at hand at the moment for me to show him to but 
an English maid, who, not having my Scotch in- 
terest in the matter, only said, when I tried to 
enlighten her on the subject of his arrival, " Poor 
old gentleman, how ill he looks !" It showed how 
sadly a little time must have changed him ; for 
when I had seen him last in Edinburgh, perhaps 
five or six years before, no one would have thought 
of calling him an old gentleman. At dinner parties 
he retired soon, being resolutely prudent as to 
keeping early hours, though he was unfortunately 
careless as to what he ate or drank, especially of 
the latter.' 

She met him afterwards at a party where he was 
all himself, with the same rich felicitous quotation 
from favourite authors, the same happy introduc- 
tion of old traditionary stories — Scotch especially 
— in a manner so easy and so unprepared. To Dr. 
Davy, then preparing a life of his great brother, 
Scott made a feeling and characteristic remark : ' I 
hope, Dr. Davy, your mother lived to see your 
brother's eminence. There must have been such 
great pleasure in that to her.' Neglecting medical 
advice, he had one or two additional shocks while 



3io 



WALTER SCOTT. 



at Malta. On Tuesday the 14th December he and 
his party went again on board the Barham, and 
reached Naples on the 17th of the same month, 
where his son Charles was waiting to receive 
him. 






CHAPTER XXV. 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 




T Naples a similar reception with that 
of Malta awaited Scott. The British 
minister — Mr. Hill, afterwards Lord 
Berwick — took the lead in showing him every 
attention, and the English nobility and gentry vied 
with him in the task. Some remarkable men were 
then in Naples, such as Mr. Auldjo, who gained 
fame in his day by an ascent of Mont Blanc, and 
published an account of it which will be found 
noticed in the Edinburgh Review for 1829-30. 
There, too, was old Matthias, whose Pursuits of 
Literature y seldom read now, had great vogue 
about the beginning of the century. Few are 
aware that it was a lengthy poem, with much 
lengthier notes, and that alike text and notes were 
steeped in the bitterest personalities and Tory 
prejudices, blended with vast learning and classical 

311 



3 I2 WALTER SCOTT. 

taste. The author had outlived his power, though 
not his powers ; had had the mortification to see 
the authors he had underrated, such as Parr and 
Godwin, universally acknowledged, and the party 
he had vilified — the Whigs — in place ; and was 
now in Naples resting under the shadow of 
withered laurels. Scott in his ruins he must have 
surveyed with something of a Sir Mungo Mala- 
growther satisfaction. Metal more attractive was 
found in Sir William Gell, the famous topographer, 
a gentleman who at fifty-six was nearly as com- 
plete a wreck as Sir Walter, and this fellow-feeling 
secured their intimacy. They leaned on each 
other like two half-fallen pillars in the same 
crumbling temple. 

Sir Walter appeared each morning at the Nea- 
politan court in the dress of a Scottish archer, of 
light green and gold embroidery, following in this 
the same fine instinctive taste which led O'Connell, 
when he stood on the Calton Hill in 1835, to stand 

' In Erin's verdant vesture clad/ 

with a gold band around his cap, while all else was 
green as emerald ! Scott would thus cut a gallant 
figure ; and only those near could see in the loose 
hanging lips and the vacant eye, marks of deep- 
seated decay. In the evenings the old cacoethcs 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 



scribendi came upon him. He at first busied him- 
self in collecting Neapolitan and Sicilian ballads 
and broadsides, and was aided in this by Matthias ; 
but by and 'by, to the horror of his friends, began 
two tales, one a novel entitled The Siege of Malta, 
and the other a story entitled Bizarro, both tend- 
ing to excite the deepest pity for the proud genius 
that had now, even before his body, become dust. 
On the 1 6th of January he heard of poor Johnny 
Lockhart's death, which he simply notices thus : 
* This boy is gone whom we made so much of. I 
could not have borne it better than I now do, and 
I might have borne it much worse.' 

Sir William Gell and Scott employed much of 
their time in visiting interesting spots near Naples. 
One was the Lago d'Agnano, where he was de- 
lighted with the tranquil beauty of the spot, and 
to find that he had overtaken the autumn, and 
found the leaves yet lingering on the trees, while 
the meadows around were green as in summer. 
It reminded him of a lake in Scotland, to which 
country his thoughts were already beginning to 
revert with an incipient home - sickness. They 
visited Pompeii ; and Scott, being soon fatigued, 
allowed himself to be carried through the disen- 
tombed city in a chair, and as he went along he 
murmured repeatedly, ' The City of the dead ! the 



3U WALTER SCOTT. 

City of the dead !' Probably Dryburgh was as 
much in his thoughts as Pompeii. He now some- 
times imagined that his debts were all paid, and 
thought that as this was the case he should again 
take to poetry for his amusement ; and Gell en- 
couraged him to think of Rhodes as a subject. 
He spent a day among the hills at La Cava and 
Paestum, and visited the grand Benedictine monas- 
tery of La Trinita de la Cava, situated in a noble 
forest of chestnuts, which spreads over very striking 
hills. Something in the view again reminded him 
of Scotland, and he repeated Jock of Hazeldean 
with great emphasis and in a clear voice. In the 
convent, mass was sung upon the organ. He exa- 
mined some of the curious MSS. in the archives, 
and was shown a book containing pictures of the 
Lombard kings. The whole day was spent delight- 
fully ; the fine weather, too, aided in raising his 
spirits, and in the forest the voice of the Minstrel 
might be heard, while the evening shadows were 
descending, repeating once more, 

' Aye she loot the tears doon fa' 
For Jock o' Hazeldean/ 

and some stanzas from his favourite ballad,' TTardy- 
knute. He was interested when told that his Old 
Mortality was translated into Italian under the 
title of The Scottish Puritans. 



RE TURN HOME AND DEA TIL 3 1 5 

Gell took him, in fine, to Pozzuoli and to Cumac. 
On the way Monte Nuovo was pointed out, and 
Scott's eye kindled as he heard of its springing up 
in one night, 

1 Like fiery arrow shot aloft from some unmeasured bow,' 

destroying the village of Tre Pergole and part of 
the Lucrine Lake. At an elevated spot on the 
road Gell showed Scott an extensive prospect of 
the Lake Avernus, the temple of Apollo, the Lu- 
crine Lake, Monte Nuovo, Baiae, Misenum, and the 
sea ; and being more a topographer than a poet, 
tried to enforce on him the names and knowledge 
of the localities. Scott listened with respect, but 
it soon became manifest that, while his ear seemed 
attentive, his soul was far ; for scarcely had they 
resumed their journey than he repeated in a grave 
tone, and with great emphasis, 

1 Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, 
We canna gang a-milking lor Charlie and his men.' 

Grantully, the lochs of the Stormont, — those 
seven sisters of beauty, — the braes of Angus, the 
distant Dunkeld and Rannoch hills, — in short, the 
scene of the first half of Waverley was now in the 
view of the poet, from which Avernus, Baiae, and 
even the blue Italian sea had vanished. 



316 WALTER SCOTT. 

He had wished to return by the Tyrol and 
Germany, partly to see the monuments at Ins- 
pruck and the feudal ruins on the Rhine, chiefly 
to visit a grander ruin still — what had once been 
Goethe — at Weimar. On the 2d of March Goethe 
died, and the melancholy luxury was denied the 
world of beholding the momentary conjunction of 
the two waning stars — the two grand old leaning 
towers. Scott heard of his death with surprise 
and a fearful sorrow. Like that of Borthwickbrae, 
it was a warning cry, — ' Be ye also ready.' ' Alas 
for Goethe!' he exclaimed; 'but heat least died 
at home. Let us to Abbotsford.' 

On the 1 6th of April his son Charles (who had 
obtained leave of absence, Walter having been 
compelled to return to his regiment) set out with 
his father on their homeward way, travelling in a 
barouche, which could be easily turned into a bed. 
The journey revived him, and still more the 
reception he met at Rome. In the ancient city 
of the Caesars, with its massive ruins and gigantic 
death-smiles of art, he took little interest now, — 
perhaps never would have taken so much as many 
vastly inferior men. Into the treasures of the 
Vatican his strength forbade him to penetrate. 
He was not, as he had been, 'a gigantic genius 
grappling with whole libraries,' but a feeble vale- 



RETURN HOME AND DEA TH. 317 

tudinarian, creeping and stumbling through them. 
For Rome as the Catholic metropolis he now 
cared little or nothing ; but there was still an- 
other aspect of the Eternal City which proved 
attractive to the mighty novelist. He valued it 
as the centre of intrigues, plots, dark assignations, 
darker assassinations, and all those abnormal 
incidents and strange characters which make up 
the wild romance of history, and form the ele- 
ments of sensational fiction. To this kind of 
style there had always been a lurking tendency 
in Scott's mind, but his good sense had suppressed 
and modified it, till now, in his second child- 
hood, it came out in full force, and would have 
produced a great deal in the most extravagant 
vein had it not been that a dead hand was holding 
the pen. Hence we find him listening with extra- 
ordinary delight to the Duke of Corchiano, when 
he told him he was possessed of a vast collection 
of papers, giving true accounts of all the murders, 
poisonings, intrigues, and curious adventures of all 
the great Roman families during many centuries, 
all of which were at his service to copy and 
publish in his own way as historical romances, 
only disguising the names, so as not to com- 
promise the living descendants. Scott was so 
captivated that he at one time thought of remain- 



3i6 WALTER SCOTT, 

ing for some time in Rome, and at another of 
returning there the next winter. 'Too late,' of 
course, was inscribed on this and many other 
schemes. At an earlier date he would undoubt- 
edly have made much of these Italian stories. 
Yet we need hardly regret his lack of service, 
when we remember, first, that the selection of such 
themes might have given a morbid hue to his 
writings, and left on them a sort of Monk Lewis 
savour, instead of the fresh smell of the gowans 
which was natural to them ; and, secondly, since 
such masters as Schiller, Shelley, Croly, and 
Washington Irving have treated them so well, — 
Schiller in his Ghost Seer ; Shelley in his Cenci ; 
Irving in some of his better Tales of a Traveller ; 
Croly in his magnificent Colonna the Painter ; 
not to speak of Aird's beautiful Biiy a Broom, 
which is essentially of an Italian type ; and not 
inferior to any of all we have named, that very 
powerful and thrilling anonymous story which 
appeared in Blackwood during 1828, and is 
entitled 'Di Vasari, a Tale of the Plague at 
Florence.' 

Whatever might be the cause, and feeble and 
diseased as Sir Walter was now, the records of his 
conversation at Rome are as rich as are to be 
found in any part of his biography. One reason 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 319 

doubtless was, that he was watched as a setting sun 
is watched ; every parting gleam registered, and 
its zodiacal light fancied if not seen above. Sparks 
of intellect and wit shone forth occasionally. 
Speaking of a ruined castle which he loved to visit, 
and where he used to stand uncovered : ' If it had 
remained uncovered for a century, surely he might 
uncover for an hour.' He quoted with great 
humour Mrs. Siddons' solemn hexameter, when 
asked by the Provost of Edinburgh if the beef were 
not too salt : 

' Beef cannot be too salt for me, my lord j' 

and seemed to agree with another of the party, who 
said he should eat salt to a limb of Lot's wife. 
His criticism on Lord Holland was, that his 
'language illustrates and adorns his thoughts as 
light streaming through coloured glass heightens 
the brilliancy of the objects it falls upon.' Even 
when wit was thick and intellect wandering, the 
good humour and the heart remained. When 
asked once why he had done for another party 
something very disagreeable for him to do, he 
replied, ' Why, as I am now good for nothing else, 
I think it is as well to be good-natured.' How 
many, on the other hand, religiously retain their ill 
conditions when all else is gone, as if there were 



320 



WALTER SCOTT. 



some commandment somewhere for a man who 
may have lived a fool to die a devil ! Scott always 
and most emphatically near his close acknow- 
ledged that he had much reason to be grateful to 
the public for their indulgence, yet who, after all, 
in the present age has been so kind to them ? 
Perhaps his most affecting saying was to Mr. 
Cheney. They had been speaking of Goethe, and 
Scott was deploring the tendency of some of his 
famous works. 'I answered that he must derive 
great consolation in the reflection that his own 
popularity was owing to no such cause. He re- 
mained silent for a moment, with his eyes fixed 
on the ground ; when he raised them, as he shook 
me by the hand, I perceived the light blue eye 
sparkled with unusual moisture. He added: " I am 
drawing near the close of my career ; I am fast 
shuffling off the stage. I have been perhaps the 
most voluminous author of the day; and it is a 
comfort to me to think that I have tried to un- 
settle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, 
and that I have written nothing which on my 
deathbed I should wish blotted." ' 

On the next day, Friday the nth of May, 
Scott had determined to leave Rome. Mr. Cheney 
tried in vain to get him to stop, because he should 
not begin his journey on a Friday. He laughed, 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 



and replied, ' Superstition is very picturesque, and I 
make it at times stand me in great stead, but I never 
allow it to interfere with interest or convenience.' 
Yet he had hurried to Scotland, we saw, to prevent 
his daughter being married in May. On Friday, 
therefore, the nth of May, Scott left Rome, with 
indifference, if not with delight. What although 
every street was filled with his admirers, every 
book-shop and book-stall with his works, and 
every playhouse echoing with operas founded upon 
them ? What although every door was thrown 
open to receive him, and every curiosity, from the 
Codex Vaticanns, that sacred book kept with sacer- 
dotal jealousy, downwards, would have been free 
to his inspection ? Homewards was now his watch- 
word ; 'Scotland's hills for me' the burden of his 
song, although he knew right well that he would 
only see them and die. Every hour in his carriage 
lessened his distance from home, but increased his 
impatience to arrive there. As he went along, 
Terni thundered with a louder voice, as if to attract 
his ear ; but he could scarcely be persuaded to turn 
aside to see this great sight, 

K 

1 Charming the eye with dread, a matchless cataract.' 

He looked at it, and also at the grand church of 

x 



322 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Santa Croce in Florence, but derived no inspiration 
from the lion roar of the one or the ' frozen music ' 
of the other. On the 17th of the month he crossed 
the Apennines, and dined on the top of the moun- 
tains. Here he felt at home. Here was snow, and 
here were pines, and these suggested Scotland, his 
own Scotland, 

1 O'er the hills and far away/ 

and he expressed himself delighted. He hurried 
through Bologna and Ferrara, but would not even 
look at any of their interesting objects. On the 
19th he arrived at Venice, and remained there four 
days, but would see none of its wonders, unless 
that he leaned a little pensively over the Bridge 
of Sighs, and scrambled down with difficulty and 
danger into the dungeons which are beneath it. 
Entering the Tyrol, that magnificent country had 
no charms, and on a page of the Book of Guests 
an after traveller found Scott's name registered by 
himself thus, 'Sir Walter Scott, for Scotland' 
The chapel even of Inspruck started no en- 
thusiasm, and through Munich, Ulm, and Heidel- 
berg he moved on as if in his coffin to Frankfort. 
There, on the 5 th of June, he entered a bookseller's 
shop, and the people, seeing an English party, pro- 
duced some lithographs, among others one of 



RETURN HOME AND DEA TH\ 323 

Abbotsford. He said, 'I have that already, sir,' 
and hastened, as if a serpent had stung him, back 
to the inn, unrecognised. 

On the 8th of June they embarked at Frankfort 
on the Rhine steamboat, and during the first two 
days, as they descended that ' abounding and re- 
joicing river/ he seemed placidly happy. At 
Nimeguen, however, on the 9th, some hours of 
great depression were succeeded by a serious 
attack of apoplexy, combined with paralysis. His 
faithful attendant Nicholson bled him, which pro- 
duced partial reanimation ; but he immediately 
insisted on renewing his journey, and on the nth 
was lifted at Rotterdam into an English steam- 
boat. He reached London on the 13th of June, 
and was carried to the St. James' Hotel, Jermyn 
Street. Here many of his friends in London, some 
from Edinburgh, and all his family, rallied round 
him. He recognised and blessed, but could not con- 
verse with his children. The first medical men were 
in daily attendance, but could do nothing for him. 
He lay in a stupor which seemed changeless as death. 

Allan Cunningham was in London then. He 
had been in Dumfries while Burns was dying, and 
says : ' During his illness Dumfries was like a be- 
sieged place, and the whole conversation on the 
streets was about him and him alone.' He found 



324 



WALTER SCOTT. 



it, strange to tell, much the same in reference to 
Scott in London. Walking home late one night, 
he found several working men standing at the 
corner of Jermyn Street ; and one of them asked 
him, as if there had been only one deathbed in 
London, ' Do you know, sir, if this is the street 
where lie is lying ?' Yes, a king lying in state ! 

Messages without number were incessantly sent 
to his hotel, including daily inquiries from all the 
members of the royal family. Reports being 
circulated that his funds were exhausted, the 
Government most munificently offered him what- 
ever sum from the public treasury might be neces- 
sary, but the offer was respectfully declined. 

Whenever the cloud partially broke, Abbotsford 
still shone out on the eyes of the sufferer, and 
seemed by its summer beauty to beckon him north- 
wards. It was as if, like his own Meg Merrilees 
with Derncleugh, his spirit would not leave the body 
but in his favourite spot. Toward it, therefore, he 
proceeded on the 7th July in the James Watt 
steamer, accompanied by Lockhart, Cadell, Dr. 
Thomas Watson (a medical man), and his two 
daughters. The party arrived at Newhaven on the 
9th, and being still, as he had been all the voyage, 
unconscious, he was conveyed to Douglas' Hotel, 
St. Andrew Square. Here he lay for two days, 



RETURN HOME AND DEA TIL 325 

Edinburgh on the whole unaware that he had re- 
turned ; at least, no demonstration whatever was 
made. We forget if even the newspapers recorded 
the arrival. And hence, too, to preserve incognito as 
much as possible, it was at a very early hour of the 
morning of the nth that Sir Walter Scott, lifted 
into his carriage, left, and knew not that he was leav- 
ing his own romantic town for ever. He remained 
torpid, till, descending the valley of the Gala, he 
raised his head, and began, like a man waking from 
a dream, to gaze about him. Suddenly he mur- 
mured, ' Gala Water surely, Buckholm, Torwood- 
lee.' When he saw the Eildons, he became greatly 
excited; and when, turning on his couch, he caught 
a glimpse of Abbotsford, he uttered a cry of delight, 
and could hardly be kept in the carriage. His ex- 
citement continued ungovernable till he reached 
the threshold of the door. Laidlaw was in waiting, 
and assisted in carrying him to the dining-room. 
Here he sat bewildered for a few minutes, when, 
resting his eye on his old kind friend, he said, ' Ha ! 
Willie Laidlaw ; how often, man, have I thought 
of you !' By this time his dogs assembled around 
his chair. They fawned on him, and licked his 
hands. He now sobbed and now smiled, till ex- 
hausted nature laid him asleep in his own Abbots- 
ford. 



326 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Next day he awoke perfectly conscious where he 
was, and was wheeled round the garden, the grand- 
children pushing the chair before them, and the 
venerable patriarch smiling serenely on them, on 
the dogs, on the house, and on the July roses in 
full bloom. He even talked a little, said he was 
better of being at home, and might cheat the 
doctors yet. ' Nothing like my ain house in all my 
travels. Just one turn more.' And then he slept 
like an infant. 

Next day he was again wheeled round the 
garden, and then into the library, and placed by 
the central window, that he might look out on the 
Tweed. He expressed a wish that Lockhart should 
read to him, and when he asked from what book, 
he replied, ' Need you ask ? there is but one.' Very 
impressive, certainly ! This man had read the most 
of the books in the literature of his own country 
and of other lands ; he had written himself hun- 
dreds of volumes ; he was surrounded at the 
moment by a vast library of books in all lan- 
guages ; and yet, now in his dying hours, there 
was but one book he thought worth listening 
to. Lockhart read him the 14th chapter of John. 
What pencil shall give us the aged and worn-out 
Wizard, with velvet cap, faded features, but bril- 
liant eye, listening in the library of Abbotsford to 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 327 

the blended sounds of the Tweed gently murmur- 
ing o'er its pebbles, and the accents of the divinest 
love and compassion flowing from the lips of the 
Man of Sorrows? 'Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid : ye believe in God, believe 
also in me. In my Father's house there are many 
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.' Scott, 
when the chapter was read, said to his son-in-law, 
' Well, this is a great comfort. I have followed you 
distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself 
again.' He again was put to bed, and sunk into a 
deep, sweet slumber. 

Next day was much the same, only he asked 
Lockhart to read him something amusing, — some- 
thing of Crabbe. Lockhart complied ; and Scott, 
imagining it was a new production, cried out, 
' Capital ! Crabbe has lost nothing.' It was the 
attack in The Borough on players. 'How will 
poor Terry endure these cuts ?' At last he could 
not stand it. ' Shut the book ; it will touch Terry 
to the quick.' 

Next day, he again mistook Phoebe Dawson (a 
story which had been read to C. J. Fox on his 
deathbed) for some part of a new volume published 
by Crabbe while he was in Italy. 'That evening 
he heard the Church Service, and when I was about 
to close the book, said, "Why do you omit the 



328 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Visitation for the Sick ? " ' which Lockhart accord- 
ingly added. 

On Tuesday the 17th he tried once more to 
write, but the right hand had lost its cunning, and 
the pen dropped from it helplessly. It was like 
Napoleon resigning his empire. The sceptre had 
departed from Judah : Scott was to write no more. 
Little wonder that he sunk back on his pillow with 
the large tears flowing down his cheek; or that, 
when after a brief sleep, Laidlaw having said, ' Sir 
Walter has had a little repose,' he exclaimed, 
' No, Willie ; no repose for Sir Walter but in the 
grave ! ' and again he wept bitterly. 

Deliriums and delusions without number followed. 
Now he thought himself administering justice as 
the Selkirkshire sheriff; anon he was giving Tom 
Purdie orders anent trees ; now, it is said, he 
dreamed he was in hell, — a dream not uncommon 
with imaginative persons in extremis. Sometimes, 
according to Lockhart, his fancy was in Jedburgh, 
and the words ' Burke Sir Walter ' escaped him in 
a dolorous tone ; and anon his mind seemed for 
the last time time to 



' Yoke itself with whirlwinds and the northern blast ;' 

and, as it 'swept the long tract of day,' words 
issued from it worthy of the Great Minstrel, 



RETURN HOME AND DEATH. 329 

snatches from Isaiah or the Book of Job, some 
grand ragged verse torn off from the Scottish 
Psalms, or an excerpt sublimer still from the 
Romish Litany, such as, 

1 Dies irae, dies ilia, 
Solvet sseclum in favilla ;' 

or, in a more pensive mood, when the whirlwind 
was moaning its last, 

1 Stabat mater dolorosa, 
Juxta crucem lachrymosa, 
Dum pendebat Filius.' 

Perhaps his family, who remembered how, to 
the harp of Allan Bane, Roderick Dhu's 

' Freed spirit burst away, 
As though it soared from battle fray,' 

wished that the soul of the 'old Makkar' would 
spring up on one of those words of winged fire 
to return no more ; but it was otherwise ordered. 
The end was near, but it was not yet, and it was 
not thus. 

On the 17th September Sir Walter awoke from 
those whirling dreams, conscious and composed. 
He told Nicholson to bring Lockhart instantly 
to his side ; and when he came, he said to him, 
' Lockhart, I may have but a minute to speak to 



33o WALTER SCOTT. 

you. My dear, be a good man ; be virtuous, be 
religious ; be a good man. Nothing else will give 
you any comfort when you come to lie here.' 
He paused ; and Lockhart said, ' Shall I send 
for Sophia and Anne?' 'No/ he replied, ' don't 
disturb them. Poor souls ! I know they were up 
all night. God bless you all.' He fell into a 
deep sleep, and seemed scarcely again conscious, 
except on the arrival of his sons, who were now 
both summoned in haste to see the close. This 
came about half-past one P.M. on the 2d Sep- 
tember, when, in the presence of all his children, 
the sun of autumn shining softly in at the open 
window, and the Tweed uttering its silver monody 
as it crept along, the spirit of Scott was released 
from its body of death. His eldest son kissed and 
closed his eyes. 

A post mortem examination discovered that the 
cause of his death was a slight softening of the 
brain. 

He was buried on the 26th September in Dry- 
burgh churchyard, — a very large company, some 
of them from distant parts of Scotland, following 
his remains, which were carried by the hands of 
his old domestics and foresters, the pall being 
borne by his sons, his sons-in-law, his little grand- 
son, and his cousins. Prayers were offered up in 



RETURN HOME AND DEA TIL 331 

the house by Dr. Baird, and Dr. Dickson of St. 
Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. The train of carriages 
extended over a mile, and the Yeomanry followed 
on horseback in great numbers. Some accident 
made the hearse pause for a few minutes on the 
top of the hill at Bemerside, a point where Scott 
used often in admiration to rein up his steed, 1 and 
the view from which the late Angell James pro- 
nounced the grandest he had ever seen. 

The trees of Dryburgh were waving with a 
stormy wind, and the sky was lowering as the 
coffin was, about half-past five P.M., deposited in 
the dust. A sob burst from a thousand hearts, 
but was stilled by the voice of Archdeacon 
Williams reading over him the beautiful service 
of the Church of England, and laying him down 
in the sure and certain hope of a blessed resur- 
rection. 

All the newspapers in Scotland, and many in 
England, clothed their columns in black for his 
death ; and on the day of his funeral the bells of 
most of our cities rung a muffled peal, — those of 
Glasgow, as heard on that dark September morn- 
ing, are still sounding in our ears. 

Sir Walter died free of debt. The sale of his 

1 The horse of the hearse is said to have been the one 
Scott used to ride. 



332 WALTER SCOTT. 

works, the insurance of his life, and a sum ad- 
vanced by Cadell on the security of his copyrights, 
completely cleared his engagements. The subse- 
quent fates of his family and estate are too well 
known to be rehearsed here. We happened to be 
present at the meeting held in Edinburgh to pave 
the way for a monument to his memory, and 
listened with delight to the speeches of Lord 
Jeffrey, who spoke of all classes coming into the 
Assembly Rooms as if 'into the temple of the 
Deity,' to do honour to the great departed ; and of 
Professor Wilson, who closed by quoting, in tones 
of trembling pathos, the lines of the poet, — 

' Ne'er to those dwellings, where the mighty rest, 
Since their foundations came a nobler guest.' 

The Duke of Buccleugh, too, spoke in a good spirit, 
as became a chief over a bard. The result of this 
meeting is now that superb column which, towering 
above the city of palaces, almost challenges equality 
with the mountains which do around it, as with 
ancient Jerusalem, ' stand alway.' 




CHAPTER XXVI. 



SCOTT, THE MAN AND POET. 




^^^EW literary characters have been so 
blameless as Sir Walter Scott. Genial, 
gentlemanly, frank, open, homely, kind- 
hearted, considerate, utterly free from vanity, 
jealousy, envy, malice, or guile, he was also distin- 
guished by high principle and the most honourable 
feelings. He had plenty, withal, of prudence, with 
the slightest spice of what the Scotch call pawki- 
ness, but duplicity and craft were unknown to, 
perhaps inconceivable by him. We forget if in all 
his characters there be one that is sly, or, properly 
speaking, cunning. His very hypocrites wear glass 
masks and dissolving cloaks, and are all too trans- 
parent. He had strong sensuous appetites and 
passions, as most healthy men have, but he kept 
them under strict control. He ate an enormous 
^breakfast, but it was his main meal. He picked 



334 



WALTER SCOTT. 



away at dinner, and seldom supped at all. While 
the richest and most sparkling wines were circu- 
lating at his board, he preferred a little spirits and 
water, and diminished his quantity latterly to almost 
zero. He slept, after working double tides, on a 
tankard of porter and a single cigar ; and a great 
deal of his talk about 'flowing quaichs' and sturdy 
'morning draughts' was rather antiquarian than 
real. One amusing little story we heard in Cum- 
berland about him. Wordsworth and he were to 
climb Helvellyn, and on the way passed a small 
public-house, the proprietor of which, standing at 
the door, saluted Wordsworth as a neighbour but 
no customer ; Scott, whose name he did not know, 
more warmly as a stranger but a customer. It 
turned out that Wordsworth, being in his house as 
well as habits a very strict teetotaller, Scott had 
walked out on various occasions alone, and enjoyed 
his ' morning ' at the little hostelry. A hearty 
laugh followed the eclaircissement, and the im- 
mortal pair proceeded (momingless) up the moun- 
tain ! But to excessive or habitual drinking he 
was in his latter years a determined foe, — led to 
this by warnings connected with more than one of 
his relatives ; and he said to Lockhart once, ' De- 
pend on it, of all vices intemperance is the most 
adverse to greatness.' Like most men of such 



THE MAN AND POET. 335 

unbounded popularity as he, — and especially in the 
past age, — he might have encountered temptations 
to intrigues, but such follies he seems invariably 
to have waved away from him ; and his life on this 
point stood in edifying contrast to many of the 
most celebrated men of his period. We have heard 
him called an indifferent husband ; but v this, we 
believe, does not convey the full truth on the sub- 
ject, — hardly a fond husband, he was a kind and a 
faithful one. As a father he was tender and con- 
fiding to a degree. In friendship he was steady 
as steel ; and as a landlord was eminently kind- 
hearted, considerate, and dutiful. This his foresters 
and small tenants felt as they hoisted aloft the 
coffin of their father and friend ! In all private 
and business and family and literary matters he 
was the most methodical of men. He despised the 
litter and gown-and-slipper tricks of literary men. 
His study was not a Chaos but a Kosmos, and he 
the Demiurge who had reduced it all to comely 
order, and sat in the midst clothed as well as in 
his right mind. He liked order in others too. 
When a correspondent sent him a letter sealed 
with a wafer, he replied, ' I am not a particular 
man, but I detest wafers/ To his brethren on 
the Bench, and his contemporaries or juniors at 
the Bar, he was ever courteous without fudge, 



WALTER SCOTT. 



accessible, and on easy terms. He never needed 
and never tried on the airs of the great man. 
There is often as much pride in the mode and 
angle of stooping as in going on tiptoe. Scott did 
neither the one nor the other ; he simply stood 
erect and walked straight forward. To young and 
rising authors he was indulgent rather than severe, 
as a rule ; and his purse as well as criticism was 
ever open to those of them who required and 
deserved aid, — nay, sometimes whether they de- 
served it or not. According to Hogg, he almost 
literally supported some unfortunate authors. 

In political zeal, as well as in family pride, he was 
at one time excessive, but experience tended much 
to modify his feelings. He mourned more, ulti- 
mately, over his own hard treatment of his brother 
Daniel than over that brother's pusillanimous 
and unworthy conduct. The ' greatest of these is 
charity' rose gradually into the centre of his moral 
code. In his sheriffdom he was the father of the 
fatherless, the shield of the oppressed, and known 
and welcomed as a sudden sunbeam in the dwell- 
ing of the poor and the dependent, acting in the 
very spirit of the grand words of Burke when he 
speaks of Howard 'remembering the forgotten.' 
From his flaming Pittism of 1806 he was subsid- 
ing into a very moderate Conservative, when the 



THE MAN AND POET. 337 

panic of the Reform Bill came over the land, and 
he proceeded to adjust his Tory mantle round him 
ere he fell, — fell, as he thought, with his country 
and his race ! Had he lived a few years longer, he 
mi^ht have gone on with Peel in his slow but 
certain movement toward Liberalism. He was by 
far too wide-minded and warm-hearted to have 
stood sullenly still, or come in last in such a 
generous and inevitable advancement. 

Scott's great fault, as is now universally con- 
ceded, was his desire of territorial acquisition and 
family aggrandizement. To be a laird, to found 
a family, to reach a patriarchal or feudal ideal, 
was his ambition, — an ambition partly springing 
from his idiosyncrasy as a lover of Scotland, as 
an echo of past ages, and which we could not 
sternly blame, had it not led to reckless specula- 
tions, and to an extravagance of expenditure in- 
volving a certain degree of moral turpitude. As 
it is, the turreted mansion of Abbotsford looks 
like a Castle Folly, and worse, because it rose 
over the head of one of the most sensible as well 
as gifted men that ever lived, reminding you of a 
cap and bells on the brow of some hoary senior, 
who has attained more than the age, and deems 
that he has all the wisdom of Solomon. There 

is almost an immoral incongruity in the spectacle. 

Y 



338 WALTER SCOTT. 

Hundreds of anecdotes are floating through the 
south of Scotland anent Scott's kindly private 
ways. One of the Ettrick Shepherd's children 
was born with a weak foot. Scott never met the 
father without inquiring, 'How's the footie?' At 
Altrive a curious little incident occurred. Scott 
was dining with Hogg there. Before dinner he 
was looking at Hogg's library. He drew out a 
volume, one of several, labelled 'Scott's Novels.' 
It was Waver ley. Putting back the volume, he 
said, 'Your binder has put a "t" too many in the 
word Scots.' ■ Not at all,' said Hogg ; ' I wrote 
out the copy.' Scott smiled. The secret had not 
yet been divulged. 

He used to call those he knew well by their 
Christian names, — Willie Laidlaw, Jamy Ballan- 
tyne, Johnnie Ditto. The late Mr. William Banks, 
engraver, Edinburgh, was assistant to Mr. Lizars. 
Whenever Scott entered the office, he would sit 
down beside the assistant, with the kind words, 
1 How are ye, Willie ? ' Lockhart does not relate 
that Sir Walter was elected Rector of St. Andrews 
University in March 1825. The election was con- 
trary to the then existing laws of the University. 
When a deputation of the students waited on him, 
he kindly thanked them, and begged them to 
' mind the laws and their studies.' 



THE MAN AND POET. 339 

His appearance need not be described, and 
cannot be well described by one that never saw 
him. It had great variety of aspect and expres- 
sion. Edward Irving insisted on it to De Quincey 
that the permanent expression on Scott's face was 
that of the Border horse-jockey, — shrewd, grufif, 
and rather selfish. Ordinary people, who saw him 
in his ordinary moods in the Parliament House, 
have described his look to us as that of dense 
stolidity, like the face of a heavy country bumpkin. 
But he had higher and more characteristic expres- 
sions. Those who waited on his countenance till 
it ' waukened,' — till the angel disturbed the placid 
pool, — were well rewarded for their patience, when 
the blended fires of the poet and the warrior 
looked out at his eyes, and his tall brow lightened 
up like a mountain in the morning sun ; and even 
on that cold bench, and surrounded by those dry, 
keen lawyers, he was suddenly 

' Attired 
In sudden brightness like a man inspired.' 

Latterly, when his hair had become snow-white, 
such moments of glory ' made him seem like Mont 
Blanc with the dawn shining on his summit.' 
Wilson and Lockhart both describe him well ; and 
in Carlyle we find his familiar features shown us 



34o WALTER SCOTT. 

in a new and strange light, as if in the gleam of 
an apothecary's evening window, ghastlily, luridly 
like him, liker his corpse. Scott the man and 
Scott the poet may seem at first to furnish 
rather elements of contrast than of harmony. As 
a man, he was plain, practical, worldly even to 
some extent ; as a poet, chivalrous, impulsive, full 
of minstrel enthusiasm, selecting by choice all his 
subjects and all his characters in the wildest and 
most out-of-the-way corners. Hence some others 
besides Carlyle have been led to believe that, 
unless we can conceive him formed on the prin- 
ciple of the composite figures in Ezekiel, half ox 
and half eagle, half business man and half Border 
minstrel, we must doubt the thoroughness of his 
poetic vein, and deem his mantle put on for the 
nonce. We grant, however, at once his bifold 
nature, and Carlyle himself admits his sincerity. 
He says, indeed, that he was not a Vates, that he 
was possessed by no great idea, that he wrote 
most of his poetry and prose to order, and that 
there was ' not fire enough in his belly to consume 
all the sins of the world.' Much of this might 
be alleged with equal truth against Shakspeare. 
Shakspeare was not consciously a Vates. Shak- 
speare would have been puzzled to reply to Car- 
lyle or to Ulrici, had they been alive to ask what 



THE MAN AND POET. 341 

his main idea was. Shakspeare 'was great, nor 
knew how great he was.' Shakspeare taught, and 
guided, and cheered the world very much as the 
sun does, in grand, unconscious might, ' God being 
in him, and he knew it not.' Shakspeare wrote, 
we believe, most of his plays to secure that mo- 
derate competence on which he retired at the 
early age of fifty. Shakspeare had even less out- 
standing personality than Scott. A munificent 
and modest benefactor, he knocked at the door 
of the human family by night, threw in inestimable 
wealth, fled, and the sound of his footsteps dying 
away in the distance was all the tidings he has 
given of himself. Carlyle, indeed, sees the resem- 
blance of Shakspeare to Scott, but he grossly per- 
verts it, calling Shakspeare's utterance ' living fire/ 
and Scott's 'futile phosphorescence,' — an asser- 
tion we must denounce as absurdly false and in- 
consistent with his other statements. Nothing but 
futile phosphorescence from a most 'genuine man !' 
Impossible ! As to fire-eating and fire-bellied 
consumption of evil, we venture to say that Scott, 
with little definite purpose in him, with a contempt 
for most of the so-called moral and religions novels 
which were then pouring from the press, and with a 
greater scorn still for such immoral and irreligious 
tales as The Elective Affinities, which Goethe was 



342 



WALTER SCOTT. 



sweating- out with the animus of a Priapus, and 
polishing after production with the skill and pains 
of an Ovid, has, by the healthy tone of his morals, 
and his usually reverent spirit, done a vast deal 
to purify the literary atmosphere ; and if he did 
not forcefully blast, yet he silently sapped many 
of the vices of the times, meeting them on what 
is their strong point, namely, the pleasure they 
give, and substituting for that a rarer and purer 
enjoyment. 

Carlyle accuses Scott of 'want of finish/ — a 
charge which had been more worthy of a Vol- 
taire blaming Shakspeare for putting a seaport 
in Bohemia, or for violating the unities, than of 
a critic who glories in being an admirer of a 
chartered libertine like Jean Paul, and whose 
own writings in general set finish, order, logic, 
grammar, and a hundred other conventionalisms 
at defiance. But the truth is, that when Carlyle 
wrote his estimate of Scott, noble and true as it 
is in many points, he was himself steeped to the 
lips in disappointment and disgust ; his own wheel 
had reached its lowest and most wintry point ; and 
the cry, ' Ho ! we go up to summer now/ had not 
yet been raised. He would probably write differ- 
ently at present. Yet his closing words are very 
beautiful : 'When he departed, he took a man's life 



THE MAN AND POET. 343 

along with him. No sounder piece of British man- 
hood was put together in that eighteenth century of 
time. Alas ! his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy 
honesty, sagacity, and goodness, when we saw it 
latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn 
with care ; the joy all fled from it ; ploughed deep 
with labour and sorrow. We shall never forget it ; 
we shall never see it again. Adieu, Sir Walter, 
pride of all Scotchmen, take our proud and sad 
farewell ! ' 

Whether a Vates or not, and whether his poetry 
was written, like Peter Pindar's razors, simply to 
sell, there can be no doubt that the article he 
produced was a very pleasant one. Scott's poetry, 
considerably over-rated in its day, has since re- 
ceived rather sparing justice, and this mainly 
because it has been compared to that of others, 
with which it has scarcely one element of simi- 
larity. You may say it is not deep like that of 
Wordsworth, nor exquisitely artless like that of 
Burns, nor soaringly spiritual like Shelley's, nor 
passionately powerful like Byron's, — but what is all 
this to the point ? It does not seek nor pretend 
to be aught of all this, — no, nor to be everlastingly 
witty like Butler's, nor polished to the pitch of 
pin-points or fire-irons like Pope's, nor artistically 
and elaborately perfect like Tennyson's, nor para- 



344 



WALTER SCOTT. 



doxical like Browning's, nor splendidly smutty 
like Swinburne's. It pretends to be Scott's poetry 
— coming after Homer's and the Ballads of the 
Border; and it has, besides their martial energy, 
a picturesque force, a chivalric spirit and fire, a free 
and graceful movement, and at times an aerial 
charm and sweetness, all its own. Call Marmion, 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and the rest, as 
Coleridge does call them, rhymed romances, and 
not poems, if you please ; they are so delightful, 
that, in spite of the critic, the delight will overflow 
into all ages, as it has already into all lands. 

Ere we can do justice to Scott's poetry, we 
must remember what it succeeded and supplanted. 
Previous to his rise, Darwin, with the cold ingenui- 
ties of his Botanical Garden; Hayley, with the 
turgid tameness of his Triumphs of Temper ; and 
Monk Lewis, with the clever monstrosities of his 
Tales of Terror, were among our most popular 
authors. Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth 
were all singing indeed, but singing to an audi- 
ence rather few than fit. Campbell alone, of the 
true poets of the time, had gained the popular 
ear, and he was fallen sound asleep — a boy Apollo 
— under the early laurels which the Pleasures of 
Hope had given him. In such a state of things, 
even had the merit of Scott's poetry been much 



THE MAN AND POET 345 

less than it was, it would have done good service. 
For it was, if not great, eminently true ; if not 
thoroughly original, the models it imitated were 
the best ; and if not charged with profound 
thought, it was fresh, natural, unconventional in 
spirit, and eminently free, flowing, and unhack- 
neyed in style. And then it had characters of 
much interest, and contained many passages of 
transcendent power. The Last Minstrel himself, 
Brian the Hermit, Roderick Dhu, Allan Bane, 
Margaret of Branksome, and Ellen Douglas, 
belonged to the former. Melrose Abbey by 
Moonlight, Love of Country, the Battle of Flod- 
den, the Battle in The Lady of the Lake by the 
side of Loch Katrine, the Death of Roderick 
Dhu, and the Picture of Skye, belonged to 
the latter class, and were worthy of any poet, 
living or dead. Altogether, at that period, and 
before Byron had written his strong poetry, and 
Wordsworth and Coleridge had been appreciated, 
and Campbell had been again aroused to indite 
his later and better strains, and the wild genius 
of Shelley had flashed and died in the horizon 
like a monster meteor, we cannot blame Scott 
for captivating the public with his song, or the 
public for being captivated with Scott. It was 
the best thing of the kind going. The author 



346 WALTER SCOTT. 

was a true poet, and it was scarcely his mis- 
fortune, and certainly not his fault, that his poetry 
was even more popular than it was good. 

Carlyle himself, although he had spoken of Scott 
as producing little but futile phosphorescence in 
comparison with Shakspeare, is compelled to admit 
some real merit in his poetry. ' We in this age 
have fallen into spiritual languor, destitute of 
belief, yet terrified at scepticism ; reduced to live a 
stinted half-life, under strange, new circumstances. 
Now vigorous whole-life, this was what of all things 
these delineations afford. The reader was- carried 
back to rough, strong times, wherein these maladies 
of ours had not yet arisen. Brawny fighters, all 
cased in buff and iron, their hearts, too, sheathed 
in oak and triple brass, caprioled their huge horses, 
shook their death-doing spears, and went forth in 
the most determined manner, nothing doubting. 
The reader sighed, " Oh that I too had lived in 
these times, had never known these logic cobwebs, 
this doubt, this sickliness, and been and felt myself 
alive among men alive !'" 

So that, after all, Scott's poetry was not mere 
phosphorescence, nor mere honeycomb, nor yet, 
as Carlyle calls it immediately afterwards, ' a 
beatific land of Cockaigne and Paradise of Do- 
nothings.' It had tonic and bracing qualities 



THE MAN AND POET. 347 

withal. It had something of old Homer in it ; 
and, like his poetry, and others of that grand age, 

1 Flashed o'er the soul a few heroic rays, 
Such as lit onward to the Golden Fleece, 
And fired their fathers in the Colchian days.' 

What Scotchman, at least, has not felt his blood 
boil while singing or hearing sung Blue Bonnets 
over the Border, or the Gathering of Gregarach : 

1 There's mist on the mountain, and night on the brae, 
But the clan has a name that is nameless by day. 
Then gather, gather, gather, Gregarach.' 

Or Norman's song in the Lady of the Lake : 

1 No fond regret must Norman know ; 

When bursts Clan Alpine on the foe, 

His heart must be like bended bow, 

His foot like arrow free, Mary/ 

Or Flora's fine chant in Waverley : 

1 O high-minded Moray, the exiled, the dear, 
In the blush of the dawning the Standard uprear ; 
Wide, wide on the winds of the North let it fly, 
Like the sun's latest flash when the tempest was nigh/ 

We venture to assert that the poetry in the 
Waverley Novels alone would have entitled its 
author to rank as one of our foremost modern 
bards. 




! 



■Z'l 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 

E come, while admiring Scott's poetry, to 
speak of his prose with greater plea- 
^yj|^ sure, because, while exhibiting all the 
finer traits of his verse, it manifests qualities not to 
be found in it, and which serve to bring out better 
the strength, breadth, richness, and originality of 
his genius. 

Surely those were halcyon days for Scotland ; 
and though then a boy of ten or eleven, we 
remember the latter portion of them well, and 
watched them as closely as we would do now, when 
twice or thrice every year it was announced : ' A 
new novel by the author of Waver ley may be ex- 
pected.' What interest was excited ! What an 
almost, yea, altogether audible smacking of lips 
was heard ! What speculations were started about 

the probable era of history to be embraced, or 
348 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 349 

particular portion of country to be described ! 
How many were saying, ' Will he give us a novel 
on Wallace by and by, supplanting the small 
swipes of Miss Porter, and forming a pendant to 
his picture of Bruce in the Lord of the Isles ? ' Not 
a few in the country districts of Scotland were ask- 
ing, ' Will he fix the scene this time in our county, 
or, oh joy ! in our native parish ?' If an elderly 
gentleman, with tall, rather clumsy form, white 
hair, and a little lame withal, were seen prowling 
about the environs of a Highland village, the 
rumour instantly ran, ' This is the Great Unknown 
studying for his next novel.' (We knew a case 
where the name of Walter Scott and a grey head, 
possessed by a dissenting preacher, — a very worthy 
man, but one of the dullest dogs that ever barked in 
a pulpit, — had nearly procured for him the freedom 
of a northern county town, and did, dexterously 
used by a wag, elicit a peal of bells on his entrance.) 
How proud were Perthshire and Perth when 
Catherine Glover stepped forth, leaning on Sir 
Walter Scott's stalwart arm ! We remember how 
the quidnuncs and critics of an old Scottish village 
were puzzled, and even somewhat alarmed, at the 
possible meaning of the word ' Redgauntlet,' when 
it was first announced. And when each expected 
tale appeared, what crowding of booksellers' shops ! 



35o WALTER SCOTT. 

what enormous parcels, making the stage-coaches 
in those ante-railway days tremble and vibrate to 
and fro, and carriers' carts collapse ! what copious 
extracts filled the papers ! how critics perspired 
and panted in uttering words vast enough to ex- 
press their admiration ! and how, while Edinburgh, 
Glasgow, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Leipsic, 
Vienna, and New York were rejoicing over the 
humours or weeping at the pathos of the new story, 
the shepherd was guffawing upon the mountain 
side, or wiping his tears with his maud ; the young 
maiden reading it on a garden-seat, or on her 
father's house stairs, with her long golden hair fall- 
ing neglected over her shoulders ; while the en- 
thusiast boy, after he had waited for it for long 
weeks, when it did at last arrive, perhaps in the 
dimness of the late summer evening, when it could 
not be read, would take it up and clasp it to his 
bosom ! We know something from personal obser- 
vation, too, of the delight with which the better 
writings of Dickens, such as David Copperfteld, 
were welcomed in London ; but if they produced 
more laughter, we are certain they did not make 
such a deep and permanent impression, had not 
the same broad, natural interest, or the same ideal, 
poetical, and most romantic charm. 

All this is long over. The man is long dead. The 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 351 

works, stripped of their halo of novelty, must be 
judged of as they are in themselves, and in the severe 
and searching light of the new age which has risen 
around us ; and that test they can stand, and that 
light they have already borne. Often a century 
must elapse ere a writer attain his true niche in 
the temple of Fame. About half that time passed 
from the appearance of Milton's Paradise Lost till 
Addison made it popular by his criticisms in the 
Spectator ; but Scott, though dead not forty years 
ago, is already a classic, has had his popularity 
confirmed, and his fame endorsed by the civilised 
world, and is as secure of his place in the future, 
although not precisely the same place, as Milton, 
Homer, and Shakspeare. Not the slightest danger 
of this verdict being reversed. A writer of great 
ability, in the Westminster Review, predicted a few 
years ago that the future popularity of the three 
principal idols of our present literary hour, Carlyle, 
Tennyson, and Ruskin, was precarious ; and this 
he grounded on what he thought their imperfect 
and belated political and religious opinions. But 
whether this vaticination be true or false, it is 
the glory of Scott, as well as of Shakspeare and 
Homer, that the power of his writings is altogether 
irrespective of any political principles, and of 
aught except the broadest and most humane 



352 WALTER SCOTT. 

religious sentiments. He, although a Conservative 
by blood and training, has never, no, not in Old 
Mortality itself, defended tyranny, never become 
the devil's advocate, never entangled any esoteric 
or exoteric creed into his writings, never indulged 
in senseless outbursts against commerce, or law, or 
logic, or metaphysics, nor in outbursts against 
anything. He has identified his genius with the 
deep, general principles of humanity, and has 
learned and used a language understood and felt 
wherever man eats and drinks, falls and rises, sins 
and suffers, loves and hates ; and aims at being 
neither a politician, nor a philosopher, nor a theo- 
logian, but at being what many politicians, philo- 
sophers, and theologians are not — a man. 

In the Waverley Novels the poetic element which 
was in him so strongly, is held quite subordinate to 
that of the noble humanity and the wide reflection 
of all that swept across his universal soul. Scott 
never pauses too long on a description of nature, 
never dallies with a fine image ; seldom, if ever, 
indulges in the luxury of rounding sentences 
merely for the sake of the euphony thereby pro- 
duced. He looks at dead scenery by the side of 
living characters, and they must move and he must 
move along with them ; he makes, but has not 
time to mount his metaphor and turn it into a 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 353 

hippogriff, hobby-horse, or velocipede; and although 

he often drops the most beautiful sentences in the 

language, — sentences not surpassed in Burke, or 

Addison, or Robert Hall, — it is half consciously, 

and as he is pursuing, without pause or thought 

of pausing, the path of his story. As Scott is 

generally read fast, and more for his plot or his 

characters and the incidents of the tale than for 

his writing, we would refer our readers, without 

quoting at present, to such passages in his works, 

as authenticating our statement, as the night scene 

in one of the first chapters of Guy Mannering ; 

the description of Bothwell Bridge in a summer 

evening in Old Mortality ; the pictures of autumn 

in the Monastery and in St Ronan's Well ; the 

description of the glorious achievements of alchymy 

in Kenilworth ; and there are hundreds besides. 

Carlyle recites with approbation a saying of 

somebody : ' No man has written so many volumes 

with so few sentences that can be quoted,' — that 

have been quoted were nearer the truth ; and the 

reason of this is obvious enough : what good or 

profit in quoting a writer who is in everybody's 

hands ? Besides, the power of many of our best 

writers lies in the whole. But we are prepared, 

whenever we deem it necessary, to prove that in no 

other novelist — not even in Cervantes, or Bulwer, 

Z 



354 WALTER SCOTT. 

or Godwin — do we find a greater number of sepa- 
rable and quotable beauties than in Scott. And 
were all these beauties shorn away, there would 
remain a residuum of worth and power, of interest 
and invention, enough to secure their pre-eminence. 
How copious they are in matter; how sweet- 
blooded in spirit ; how strong, yet simple and 
limpid in style, — ' simple as the water, strong as the 
cataract ! ' How profound, without any laboured 
search or ostentatious anatomy, in their knowledge 
of human nature ! how minutely accurate usually in 
their historical costume ! how their characters teem 
with life, and move and walk and seem blushing 
with the blood which a master spirit has shot into 
their resuscitated veins ! how delightfully true, yet 
splendidly ideal, in their pictures of battle scenery 
and historical incident ! how pure, amidst all their 
genialities and generosities, in their moral tone! 
and how sound in the main, healthy and Christian, 
broad and charitable, in their religious spirit ! 

In regarding him as the master of the novel, the 
greatest by far that ever lived (Cervantes pos- 
sibly was a greater genius, and his Don Quixote is 
perhaps a better novel than any one of Scott's; 
but we look at Scott as the creatpr of a whole 
world of fiction), more minutely we have to speak 
of the width of his sympathy, of the use he makes 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 355 

of the power of contrast, of his immeasurable 
variety, and of the moral and religious character 
and influences of his Novels. 

Scott's main quality is his exceeding breadth 
of sympathy. Shakspeare has been called the 
greatest of men because he was the widest of sym- 
pathisers. Scott on this point was not very far 
inferior, and this enabled him to furnish a table 
with viands adapted for every taste. He pre- 
sented pictures of nature in her grandest and most 
solitary aspects ; sketches of romantic character ; 
incidents of heroic adventure and sublime super- 
stitions ; traditions for the lovers of the strange, 
the mysterious, and the poetical. Then for anti- 
quarians he had 

i A rowth o' auld nicknackets, 
Rusty aim caps and jinglin' jackets 
Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets 

A towmont guid ; 
And parritch pats and auld saut backets 
Afore the flood. ' 

Then for the lovers of sport he could intersperse 
the liveliest descriptions of hunting, fishing, dogs, 
horses, and falcons. To the lovers of the military 
art his Novels were a perfect study, — valuable for 
their strategic details as well as for the martial fire 
which burns in them. In courts he is as much at 
home as in camps, and has been called peculiarly 



WALTER SCOTT. 



the poet of princes ; and yet, who has painted 
the life of the lower ranks with greater force, 
fidelity, and sympathy ? How many gentlemen 
have come glowing from his plastic hand, and yet 
with what gusto he has depicted blackguards and 
villains of every shape and hue ! To scholars every 
page teems with recondite lore ; to the students of 
human nature he unbares the deepest secrets of 
the heart. Readers of history find his writings 
nearly as true, and far more delightful, than the 
works of Robertson and Hume. The books teem 
with stories for the lovers of the Ana ; and ladies 
are attracted to them by the purity of their tone 
and the chivalric gallantry of their spirit. Gour- 
mands even, revel in their imaginary meals so 
heartily described, and Scott's Novels are the best 
appetizers in the world. In all countries, too, and 
in most ages, he is at home, — as strong among the 
lilies of France as on the sands of Syria, on the 
green turf of Sherwood Forest as on the heather of 
Caledonia. All this not only proclaims powers 
nearly Shakspearean in width though not in depth, 
but proves prodigious culture ; and the mere mass 
of miscellaneous knowledge in Scott's works were 
enough to have founded a brilliant reputation. 
Scott's breadth of sympathy is not confined to the 
human race. His dogs and horses are much better 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 357 

drawn than most other novelists' men and women, 
aye, than the most of nature's ordinary produc- 
tions in the human line. Witness the terrier Wasp 
and the mare Dumple ; the cow Brockie in The 
Heart of Midlothian; Klepper the Bohemian's pal- 
frey, in Quentin Durward; Bevis in Woodstock ; 
Roswal, that nobler hound of the Scottish knight, 
in The Talisman; and, best of all, Gustavus, the 
faithful and congenial horse, who long bears and 
at last clothes the immortal limbs of Sir Dugald 
Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, and who was the name- 
sake of Gustavus Adolphus, the lion of the North, 
and the bulwark of the Protestant faith ! Scott 
had lived much with the lower animals (not the 
brute but the mute creation, as Lord Erskine used 
to call them), and learned to understand their 
habits, and had entered further than most men 
do into their natures, and those souls of theirs 
so mysteriously hid in God, but which do really 
exist, and connect them by strangest cords and 
sympathies with the human family. 

Connected with his breadth is his extreme fair- 
ness to all his characters, — except, perhaps, the 
wilder of his Cameronians, — and the justice he does 
to them even when bad or dubious ; faithful thus 
to his poetic — let us call it rather his Christian — 
instinct of finding a ' soul of goodness in things 



358 WALTER SCOTT. 

that are evil.' Few men of his time were freer 
from evil than Scott, and yet, as Shelley says of 
Leigh Hunt, ' none had a more exalted tolerance 
for those who do and are evil.' He looks on all 
his characters with the benevolent regard of a 
creator, and gives them all their due, and nothing 
more : if bad, makes the best of them ; if good, 
faithfully registers their evil as well as good quali- 
ties. Hence his homicides, caterans, and smug- 
glers are all human, and have virtues of their own. 
Meg Merrilees, ' harlot, thief, witch, and gipsy/ 
has wild fidelity and undaunted resolution. Hen- 
bane Dwining is a careful and kind leech to those 
whom it is not his interest to poison. Ranald 
MacEagh loves his grandchild, and robs from a 
hundred Campbells to support Dalgetty his de- 
liverer for nothing. Varney is devoted to Leicester. 
The Bohemian loves Klepper, and the star Alde- 
boran and his brethren, and has a lurking liking for 
Quentin Durward. Dirk Hatteraick, when charged 
with the want of a single virtue, replies, l Virtue, 
Donner ! I was always faithful to my owners, 
always accounted for cargo to the last stiver ;' and 
his last action ere he hangs himself is to write an 
account of the state of the trade to Flushing, and 
we have no doubt it was a very accurate account ! 
The murderess, Meg Murdockson, loves Madge 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 359 

her mad daughter, and will not betray Staunton 
because she had nursed him at her own breast. 
Thus ever will the great artist, like the dog in 
Byron's Darkness, be 'faithful to a corpse, and 
keep the hounds and wolves away from it/ as 
much as to a living subject, place every picture in 
its best possible light, and feel himself bound to 
express something of that ideal which his genius 
and his heart see hovering over all beings that 
God has made. Akin to this fairness is his total 
want of exaggeration. How well is this shown 
in the trial scene of Effie Deans ! After the heart- 
rending scene, an ordinary writer would probably 
have described the crowd as still agitated on 
leaving the court. Scott, more true to reality, 
says, ' The crowd rushed shouldering each other 
out of the court, and soon forgot whatever they 
had felt as impressive in the scene which they had 
witnessed.' We find the same moderation and 
' moral sweetness ' in nearly all his works ; and it 
is in this respect, more than in subtlety of thought 
or power of imagination, that he approaches Shak- 
speare. Yet he has occasional touches which, 
in sudden and almost supernatural felicity and 
pathos, are worthy of the great English poet. 
Such is Meg Merrilees saying, ' I am nae good 
woman. I am bad eneugh ; but / can do what 






360 WALTER SCOTT. 

good women canna and darena do! Such is Re- 
becca's reply when ordered to remove her veil : 
1 1 will obey you. Ye are elders among your people ; 
and at your command I will show you the features 
of an ill-fated maiden ;' and the wonderful words 
she utters when about to spring from the battle- 
ments of Torquilstone. Such is the entire scene 
between Jeanie and Effie Deans in prison, and the 
account of Sir Hugh Robsart's illness in Kenil- 
worth. The once celebrated John Scott of Aber- 
deen (cut off prematurely ere he had established 
fully his claim to be one of the finest prose writers 
of the day, but whose Trip to Paris, Character of 
Robert Hall as a Preacher, and paper ' On the 
Waverley Novels ' in the first volume of The Lon- 
don Magazine, will long survive as most admirable 
specimens of chaste yet vigorous composition) 
thus notices one of his inimitable hits : ' The 
Bailie in Rob Roy assures his kinsman that if 
ever a hundred pound, or even twa ! would put 
him and his family into a settled way, he need but 
just send him a line to the Saut-market ; and Rob 
returns the compliment by squeezing the Bailie's 
hand, grasping his basket-hilt, and protesting that, 
if any one affronted his kinsman, he wad stozu the 
lugs oot of his head were he the best man in Glas- 
gow. How exquisite is all this ! The citizen, in 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 361 

a moment of enthusiasm, offering a hundred 
pounds, or even twa ! It is like the spring of a 
cripple, who, not being able to walk a moderate 
pace, throws himself forward four feet at a time. 
His liberality bursts out with impetuosity, like a 
dam of water when the sluice is raised. Such 
touches as these are not the fruit of study. The 
giving of them is not probably accompanied with 
a preconception of their effect. When given, they 
escape, as it were, like natural oozings from a 
mind gifted with a wonderfully quick and true 
feeling of what is picturesque in the operation of 
the principles of character.' 

Still more obvious and equally delightful are 
the uniform healthiness of Sir Walter's spirit ; the 
simplicity, clearness, and flexibility of his style, 
which, capable of the highest eloquence, elabora- 
tion, and passionate fervour, pursues in general the 
tenor of its way as evenly as a common letter ; 
his constant vein of strong sound sense ; his rich 
but never excessive or ostentatious use of imagery ; 
his dramatic power ; his vivid, if not always 
minutely accurate, descriptions of scenery ; his 
intense nationality, beautifully blended with a true 
cosmopolitan width, and the sudden breaking out, 
amidst prosaic details and mere commonplace, 
of the bardic spirit, like Hecla's fire spouting out 



362 WALTER SCOTT. 

of Hecla's ice. His faults may be summed up 
thus : frequent carelessness of language ; occa- 
sional quaintness of thought ; a trick of intro- 
ducing learned terms into conversation, and, as 
with Baron Bradwardine and Jonathan Oldbuck, 
pursuing the humours of an odd character to a 
wearisome length ; a frequent awkwardness in the 
disentanglement of plots, and, in the latter tales, 
prolixity of introductions ; occasional repetition of 
himself; an overloading of his page with anti- 
quarian details ; an obvious walking through his 
part at times, and now and then, though very 
rarely, a profusion of dreary prose. His broad 
humour, too, is apt to degenerate into farce ; nor 
is his wit always so felicitous or finished as are 
the efforts of his fancy and imagination. 

Scott uses contrast with great frequency and 
uniformly powerful effect in his Novels. Contrast, 
indeed, producing unity may be called Scott's artis- 
tically great and peculiar power, — the two-handed 
sword of his genius. One of the main merits in 
Waverley lies in its blending of the past and the 
present in such a thorough union, that you are re- 
minded of the phenomenon described in the grand 
old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, ' of the auld mune 
in the new ane's arms ;' and the eagle flying over 
the Pass of Ballybrough, at which Evan Dhu aims 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 363 

his fowling-piece in vain, seems a lofty link be- 
tween the Highland hills and the Lowland braes, 
and a metaphor of the splendid tale itself as con- 
necting the Sassenach and the Gael together ! In 
Gity Mannering, over the quiet pastoral scenes 
and simple characters hovers the weird light of 
the supernatural like an electric arch, and one feels 
that there was intense beauty if not truth in that 
old astrology, of which it is not perhaps too much 
to say, — 

' Surely no fantasy that ever crossed 
The heaven of midnight like a golden haze, 
Making the lovely lovelier, as a crown 
Of halo does the moon, so fair as thou, 
Divinest falsehood called Astrology ! 
Wild dawn of science ! morning dream of Truth ! ' 

In Rob Roy, the life of a counting-house in 
London and the abode of a cateran in Balquhidder 
are brought into sharp, and, on the whole, very 
striking contrast. In the Heart of Midlothian, the 
extremes of Edinburgh Canongate and of Court 
life in London, Meg Murdockson and Queen Caro- 
line, John Duke of Argyle and Daddie Ratcliffe, 
are reconciled. In Old Mortality, we have Came- 
ronians of the very straitest sect pitted against 
Claverhouse ; Mause Headrigg and Edith Bellen- 
den brought into juxtaposition. In Kcnihvorth, 
the inn at Cumnor balances the castle of the 



3^4 



WALTER SCOTT. 



Earl of Leicester, and the dwarfish Dicky Sludge 
determines the fate of the beautiful Amy Robsart. 
In The Bride of Lammermuir, the extravagant 
humours of Caleb Balderstone relieve yet deepen 
the horrors of Lucy Ashton's tragedy ; and we 
have already seen the magical effect produced in 
The Pirate by the contrast between Minna and 
Brenda, as well as between both and the savage 
rovers of the sea. Many trace a deepening de- 
generacy in those novels following Ivanhoe ; but 
others, we think with more justice, find the same 
spirit and power working quite as freely, if not 
with such conscious and exuberant force, in his 
Nigel and Quentin Dttrward, and even in parts of 
his Abbot, St. Ronaris Well, and Redgauntlet, not 
to speak of his splendid and sustained Talisman, 
which, occurring very late in the series, exhibits all 
the original strength and glory of his genius under 
the subjugation of an art more exquisitely per- 
fect than any other of his Novels, or perhaps any 
other fiction whatever, has displayed. Contrast in 
that superb story, too, is the great charm, the 
contrast especially between Saladin and Cceur de 
Lion, — a contrast including that of race and re- 
ligion, as well as of the two persons and characters, 
and extending to the very exercises in which they 
both approve themselves matchless proficients, — the 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 365 

one cutting a bar of iron in sunder with his two- 
handed sword, and the other severing a pillow in 
twain with his delicate scimitar ! No narrow- 
minded man could ever have done such justice as 
Scott does in this novel to the better parts and 
spirit of Islam ; and he, be it noticed, did so fifteen 
years before Carlyle wrote his Heroes and Hero- 
worship, with its warm commendation of Ma- 
homet, and forty-four ere the Quarterly Review 
startled the literary world with its recent extra- 
ordinary paper entitled ' Islam,' — a paper which, 
had it appeared in the days of Gifford, or even 
Lockhart, would have terminated the existence of 
that venerable organ of Conservatism. Genius 
like Scott's is 'before all ages;' and even philo- 
sophy must take many rests ere it can overtake it. 
The variety and originality of Scott's charac- 
ters is another point in which he may be likened, 
though still at a great distance, to Shakspeare. 
What galleries they form of the bold, the bad, 
the grotesque, the ludicrous, the beautiful, and the 
noble, now arranged in graceful groupes, now pro- 
jected in striking contrast, and now standing out 
in strong relief like solitary pines upon a mountain 
side ! Let us notice a very few out of multitudes. 
In Waverley, we have the venerable Baron Brad- 
wardine, the gallant Vich Ian Vohr, the adventu- 



366 WALTER SCOTT. 

rous Charles Edward, the beautiful Flora Maclvor, 
and the sweet and girlish Rose, set in the front of 
a picture, the background of which is peopled by 
Bailie MacWheeble (Coleridge's special favourite), 
Callum Begg, the Gifted Gilfillan, Mrs. Flockhart, 
Balmawhapple, and David Gellatley dancing to 
the wild wind of his own music. In Guy Mamier- 
ing, there is room under the tall shoulder of Meg 
Merrilees, the real heroine of the tale, for the 
stalwart Dandie Dinmont, the rugged Hatteraick, 
Paulus Pleydell, Esq., the most astute of advocates, 
Gilbert Glossin, the wiliest of lawyers, Jock Jabos, 
prince of postilions, and Duncan MacGufTog, most 
ugsome of turnkeys. In the Antiquary, two of the 
humbler characters, Edie Ochiltree and Elspeth 
of the Craigburnfoot, are the best ; but the drop- 
ping of Oldbuck's grey shaggy eyebrows when he 
is angry is a trait taken from Scott himself, as 
James Hogg in his Memoirs often testifies ; and he 
bears, besides, a striking resemblance in his early 
love disappointment to his creator. Old Caxon, 
though he does not rise much higher than Mor- 
land's asses, is depicted with equal power ; his 
daughter Jenny is sweetness and modesty itself; 
and alike Lieutenant Taffril, Hector Maclntyre, 
and the Phoca who robs him of his cane, are fine 
animals. In Rob Roy, the Bailie and Rob form a 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 367 

pair altogether inimitable, united by downright 
dissimilitude, cemented by the elements of ex- 
plosion ; and besides them, and Andrew Fair- 
service and Diana, there are the precentor, Mr. 
Hammorgaw ; Mattie, the lassie quean, afterwards 
Mrs. Jarvie ; Clerk Jobson, the pettifogger ; Clerk 
Touthope ; Garschattachin, with his drunken cour- 
age ; Iverach, with his singed plaid ; and last, not 
least, the hack, Souple Sam, with his 'curious and 
complete lameness, making use of three legs for 
the sake of progression, while the fourth appeared 
as if meant to be flourished in the air by way of 
accompaniment.' And even in some of his later 
novels we have seen already how this wealth of 
character continues startling, although the quality 
is not always equal. We have often regretted that 
Sir Walter did not commence writing novels ten 
years sooner than he did, in which case we would 
have had other twenty novels as fresh and over- 
flowing with life, and character, and poetry, and fun, 
as those we are privileged at present to possess. 

We pass now to some closing remarks on the 
moral and religious influences of Sir Walter Scott's 
Novels. And let us observe here, once for all, 
that if we look in Scott for any narrow, con- 
tracted, or merely conventional morality, we shall 
look in vain. The morality that crushes natural 



36S WALTER SCOTT. 

instincts, that confounds the positive with the 
moral, that refuses to grant innocent recreations 
or gives them with a grudge which taints them with 
bitterness, that identifies duty and life with aus- 
terity, gloom, and useless self-denial, and founds 
its rules and regulations very much on the old 
Manichean hypothesis that matter is evil and the 
body the creation of the Wicked one, — that nature 
is fallen as well as man ; this is entirely opposite 
to Scott's spirit, as it is, indeed, if we err not, to 
that of the Great Teacher Himself. Scott felt that 
morality on these terms may be possible, but can 
never be attractive and scarcely permanent ; for, 
while casting out some evils, it often introduces 
others worse and wickeder than those superseded, 
leading to pride, formality, cold-heartedness, and 
the want of that broad charity which thinketh 
no evil (having enough to do with the evil which 
requires no thinking to see, and no search to find), 
and that beareth and believeth all things. Scott's 
moral code is founded on a deep knowledge of 
human nature in all its strength and weakness, 
and sympathy with its sore struggles and thick 
temptations ; on a firm conviction that compara- 
tively few men are in themselves much better 
or worse than their neighbours ; that morality is 
far more a matter of the inward heart and soul 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 369 

than of the outward deportment, depends more 
on the soundness of the kernel than on the com- 
pleteness of the shell ; and that in loving our 
neighbour as ourselves lies the marrow of the 
Law, just as in loving God with all our mind and 
strength lies the essence of the Gospel. In show- 
ing us the faults of the generous and the good, he 
uniformly acts on the principle of first getting us 
warmly to appreciate their merits, to feel for them 
as personal friends, and to be as anxious as are 
personal friends to wean those they love from their 
errors. He delights, too, rather in lashing the 
sins of the soul than those of the temperament 
and passions ; and so did the Master of Christian 
morals before him. 

On the other hand, he is not afraid, whenever 
occasion serves, to show vice its own feature with 
all the fidelity of Solomon and all the force of 
Hogarth. What vice has Scott not exposed, what 
villany has he spared ! Is it hypocrisy ? Think 
of mine Host of the Candlestick in Waverley, Tom 
Trumbull in Redgauntlet, and Ned Christian in 
Peveril. Is it legal chicanery, leading by sure gra- 
dation to darker crime ? Think of Glossin in Guy 
Mannering. Is it sottishness ? Think of Michael 
Lambourne and Nanty Ewart. Is it seduction ? 

Remember George Staunton. Is it quackery ? 
2 A 



370 WALTER SCOTT. 

Down, Dousterswivel, on thy knees and confess 
what an impostor and charlatan thou art ! Is it 
accomplished, far-stretching, but self-destroying 
fraud ? Think of Rashleigh Osbaldistone and his 
hideous dying moments. Is it idleness and the 
self-indulgent frivolity of youth ? Think of his 
cousin Francis. Is it selfish family pride ? Think 
of Lady Ashton. Is it that somewhat loftier but 
equally ruinous ambition, which, mounting the 
ladder of power, is ready to trample on the ten- 
derest ties, and to moisten its rounds by the 
dearest blood ? Remember the Earl of Leicester. 
Is it a thorough want of principle and almost of 
human feeling ? Think of such men as Varney 
and Etherington, and the Templar, Giles Amaury, 
in The Talisman. Is it even the excess of human 
affection mismanaged to madness ? Think of 
Elspeth MacTavish, the Highland Widow, or 
Woman of the Tree. And let it be marked that 
Scott is as faithful in administering the ideal 
punishments as he is in branding the crimes, or 
exposing the errors. His works, in one view of 
them, may be called a long hymn to Retribution, 
and a many-volumed proof that justice is done 
certainly, if not fully, in this present preliminary 
life. Yet he is aware of important exceptions to 
the rule, as will be proved by a remarkable quota- 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 371 

tion from one of his prefaces : ( The writer of 
Ivanhoe was censured because he had not assigned 
Wilfred to Rebecca rather than to the less in- 
teresting Rowena. But, not to mention that the 
prejudices of that age rendered such a union im- 
possible, the author may, in passing, observe that 
he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and 
lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by 
an attempt to reward virtue with temporal pro- 
sperity. Such is not the recompense which Provi- 
dence has deemed worthy of suffering merit ; and 
it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young 
persons, the most common readers of romance, 
that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either 
naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, 
the gratification of our passions or the attainment 
of our wishes. If a virtuous and self-denied cha- 
racter is always dismissed with temporal wealth, 
greatness, or rank, the reader will be apt to say, 
Verily virtue has had its reward. But a glance at 
the great picture of life will show that the duties of 
self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, 
are seldom thus remunerated, and that the internal 
consciousness of their high-minded discharge of 
duty produces in their own reflections a more 
adequate recompense, in the form of that peace 
which the world cannot give nor take away.' 



372 WALTER SCOTT. 

After all this, it may seem poor praise to say- 
that not only do Scott's writings never inflame the 
passions, or seek to shake the moral principles, but 
they are entirely free from that levity and coarse- 
ness of language which are often found where 
there is no corruption, and unite a manly code of 
morals with a feminine delicacy of feeling. The 
best proof of this will be found in the great im- 
provement which has taken place in the moral 
tone of fictions since he wrote. Godwin, no doubt, 
Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Austen, and Miss Edgeworth 
were pure, and so far purified the taste ; but Scott, 
a mightier genius than all of them put together, 
set the copestone on the reformation they had 
begun. And, with the exception, of course, of some 
of the French school abroad and their imitators 
at home, most fictionists are now compelled to 
observe decency of language, and to pay outward 
respect, at least, to those great common laws of 
morality which the world has sanctioned as 
essential to its well-being and its healthy action. 

In reference to Scott's religion, so far as that 
was a personal matter, we have nothing to say. He 
always professed himself an attached member of 
the Church of England, in love with her liturgy 
and worship, if not, perhaps, exactly e7i rapport with 
all her articles. Yet if we take his Journal as a 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 373 

full, as it was a final exponent of his religious senti- 
ments, his deviations from the orthodox creed were 
exceedingly slight, and his general belief in Chris- 
tianity seems never to have been shaken. We 
have quoted above his significant and earnest 
dying words to Lockhart. We are not prepared 
to deny that he had somewhat strong prejudices 
against what is called the Evangelical School, that 
he disliked very pious females, and that no more 
than Jonathan Oldbuck was he a regular attender 
on church : but he paid, on the whole, a satis- 
factory homage to the Sabbath, always spending 
a portion of that day in religious exercises and the 
instruction of his children ; he believed as well as 
admired the Bible, and religious reverence was 
indeed an essential part of his constitution. How 
his views and feelings might have been modified in 
our strange, faith-shattering, or rather faith-shifting 
days, — days in which, perhaps, after all, faith is gain- 
ing in breadth what it is losing in intensity ; less 
drying up than changing its channel, — cannot, of 
course, be either stated or surmised. But, without 
contending for the evangelical character of any of 
his works in the strict sense of that term, we main- 
tain that no one who had not drunk into the very 
depth of the spirit of Christianity could have 
created a Jeanie Deans. He did not, indeed, create, 



374 WALTER SCOTT. 

he only copied her from many living examples he 
had met with among the Christian women of his 
native land ; but unless he had admired and under- 
stood, he would not have condensed these examples 
into this consummate one, or would have dared — 
and in that age it required some daring — to make 
Rebecca the Jewess the finest character and the 
truest Christian in the most brilliant of all his tales, 
and put into her lips that noble strain which ranks 
almost beside the old Psalms of David : 

' When Israel, of the Lord beloved, 
Out from the land of bondage came, 
Her fathers' God before her moved, 
An awful Guide in cloud and flame. 

* By day along the astonished lands 
The cloudy pillar glided slow, 
By night Arabia's crimsoned sands 
Returned the fiery column's glow. 

' There rose the choral hymn of praise, 

And trump and timbrel answered keen, 
And Zion's daughters poured their lays, 
And priests' and warriors' voice between ;' 

or could have sustained throughout his numerous 
tales that general respect for the institutions and 
the ministers of religion, that reverence for the 
Scriptures, or that all-embracing charity, which 
so distinguish his every page. He that is not 
against us is on our part, says the Founder of 
Christianity Himself; and His words, we venture 



THE MASTER OF THE NOVEL. 375 

to say, may be applied fearlessly to the author 

of the Waverley Novels. 

Old Mortality, all may remember, spent his life 

in visiting the tombs of the martyrs ; and there 

exists at least one remarkable man of the day who 

might earn the name of 'New Mortality' from a 

similar habit. We refer to the author of the Life 

of Chalmers in the present series. The tendency, 

however, is rather now-a-days to repair to the tombs 

of the poets. It has been at least our own fortune 

to have stood at some of the most celebrated of 

the resting-places of the renowned. Years ago we 

visited the mausoleum which, in Dumfries, 

1 Directs pale Scotia's way 
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust/ 

with many conflicting emotions, as we remembered 

how much power and weakness lay buried there ; 

although the feeling left last and uppermost was 

that expressed in the words, 

1 The glory dies not, and the grief is past.' 

Some time after we visited Wordsworth's grave, 

as evening was dropping her dewy curtain over 

Grasmere Lake, and the Rotha, blue darling of 

her poet's eye, was softening her voice amidst the 

stillness, and the New Moon had suddenly shone 

out in the west, as if to certify the immortality 

of his song and himself, and to cut with her silver 



376 WALTER SCOTT. 

sickle whatever doubts as to either might have 
been crossing our souls. A year or two later we 
visited the grave of Southey, with Derwentwater 
spreading out her beautiful bosom on the left ; 
Portinscale, the loveliest of English villages, laugh- 
ing through roses in the foreground ; and old 
Skiddaw standing up like the poet's everlasting 
monument behind. But none of these visits 
moved us more than when, one splendid Sep- 
tember forenoon in 1859, we stood in Dryburgh 
Abbey, and leaned over the tomb of Scott, with 
a vast yew that might have formed a coronet 
for the head of Death shadowing it, and the 
sound of the Tweed — the sound of all others 
sweetest in the ear of the mighty Wizard — com- 
ing up through the woodland as a lullaby to 
his dust ; — and thus leaning and musing there, 
thought of the benign creations of that man's 
mind ; of the stores of knowledge it had accumu- 
lated ; of the entire literature which had emanated 
from it ; and of the intellectual, moral, and purely 
and loftily spiritual influences which that literature 
had produced, was producing, and would produce 
for evermore ; — we felt as if a multitude of men, 
as if a nation were slumbering below, and, full of 
blended awe and love, turning away, we left him 
alone with his glory ! 



cif^atsgo#> 



CONCLUSION. 



THE COMING CENTENARY. 




^E cannot close this brief and imperfect, 
but not, we trust, inaccurate or insincere 



life of Sir Walter Scott without a very 
few closing words in reference to the centenary of 
his birth which is at hand. 

The time draws nigh when Scotland is to do 
herself and her most gifted son the honour of a 
centenary celebration ; and certainly, if it exhibit 
the loyalty and enthusiasm, or even a portion of it, 
which saluted that of Robert Burns, it will add a 
lustre and a laurel to the year 1871 that shall 
render it only second to the year 177 1, when the 
great Minstrel of the Border and the prose Shak- 
speare of Scotland appeared in the metropolis of 
his native land. 

We use the words ' a portion of it' advisedly, for we 
are aware that there were circumstances connected 

377 



378 WALTER SCOTT. 

with the Burns celebration which secured greater 
enthusiasm than we can expect in the case of Sir 
Walter Scott. Mrs. Stowe, in her Sunny Memories, 
notices that, at the public meetings held in Scot- 
land in her honour in 1853, any allusion made to 
Burns brought down the house, while Scott's name 
was received rather coldly. We may supply some 
reasons for what seems to have puzzled her con- 
siderably ; and these reasons will be found to apply 
to the point in hand. In the first place, Mrs. 
Stowe's admirers — and we state it in her honour, 
not in her disparagement — belonged principally to 
the people, the very class among whom Burns is 
most highly admired ; the upper classes were not 
so fully represented at her gatherings, and they in 
general prefer Scott to Burns. Secondly, there is 
a feeling very prevalent in Scotland that Burns 
was a shamefully used man ; that his treatment at 
the hands of the nobility, and middle class too, 
of his time led to much of his misery and reckless 
conduct ; and that his country had contracted a 
debt to his memory which must be publicly and 
in the amplest measure discharged. Every raptu- 
rous cheer Mrs. Stowe heard at her meetings, when 
the name Burns was pronounced, was a separate 
instalment in the clearance of that debt ; and it 
seemed entirely liquidated on the memorable 25th 



THE COMING CENTENARY. 379 

of January 1859. Scott, on the other hand, had 
been for the greater part of his life a prosperous 
gentleman, and, so far as money was concerned, 
had received, his reward. His misfortunes after- 
wards were to a great extent the result of his own 
extravagance and ambition. Ebenezer Elliott says 
of the Scotch people and Burns : 

1 They gave him more than gold, 
They read the brave marts book! 

But the people of Scotland, England, and the 
world read Scott and gave him gold besides. 
Thirdly, there was lingering in 1853, and there 
lingers still, a certain prejudice, partly political and 
partly religious, against Scott, founded on his Tory 
principles, and on his treatment of the Covenanters. 
That this prejudice has to a great extent subsided 
since, we fondly believe ; but it is not entirely gone. 
Burns, on the contrary, although sometimes pro- 
fane enough, was a Radical in politics ; and his 
Cottar s Saturday Night, like charity, covered a 
multitude of sins. Hence nothing will shake him 
in the estimation of his countrymen. While admit- 
ting Scott's general superiority, they trace it partly 
to his happier circumstances and greater success, 
and determinedly hold to it that Burns is the re- 
presentative poet of his nation. 



*So WALTER SCOTT. 



This, we say, is the feeling of the majority. With 
some, again, Scott stands on a much higher vantage- 
ground ; and by all he is admired. This ought to, 
and must, secure a noble centenary ; but we ques- 
tion if it will have the same heartiness of celebra- 
tion as that of 1859, although it shall be far more 
enthusiastic, in Scotland at any rate, than the tre- 
centenary of Shakspeare in 1864. 

About the propriety of such a centenary celebra- 
tion there can, we think, be no reasonable doubt. 
The Scotch are slow to recognise their great men 
in their lifetime, and their recognition, even when 
it comes, seldom takes any very enthusiastic or 
demonstrative form. It sometimes amounts to little 
else than a cessation from abuse ; and we are re- 
minded of the one privilege which befell Words- 
worth's old Cumberland beggar through his long 
lingering on the road, that 

' The dogs turned away, 
Weary of barking at him* 

Such is, too, the inherent, call it coldness, or 
reticence, or bashfulness of the Scottish character, 
that whenever we hear of any great testimonial 
to living national merit suddenly paid, or any 
keen enthusiasm suddenly excited, we begin to 
ask, Why, what evil has the recipient been doing ? 



THE COMING CENTENARY. 381 

over what flickering fama is this meant to be 
the golden extinguisher ? or, if not, Is there 
not some political end to be thus served, or 
party animus to be thus covertly gained ? When 
death comes, this is all changed, and then every 
opportunity for the outflow of the pent-up feeling 
is given and welcomed. And even after the great 
man has been dead, as Scott has been, for nearly 
forty years, it becomes incumbent on the people to 
prove that their feeling has not been of the mere 
de mortuis nil nisi bonum kind, — not a mere evan- 
escent and got-up sensation, — but a deep, quiet, 
sober, and growing conviction of the solid worth of 
his achievements, and of the thorough identification 
of his name and works with the nation's pride and 
the nation's glory. Since Scott departed, some 
great changes have taken place in literature, and 
especially in the novel. New dynasties of powcr 
have sprung up abroad and at home. Names to 
conjure with — such as those of Victor Hugo, and 
Alexandre Dumas, and Balzac, and Bulwer Lytton, 
and Thackeray, and Dickens, and others scarcely 
inferior — have been placed by their admirers, if 
not by those who bear them, not very far from Sir 
Walter's own ; and it behoves Scotland to embrace 
the opportunity afforded by the 15th of August 
1871 to declare, in a manner worthy of herself, and 



3 S2 WALTER SCOTT. 

unmistakeable in the certainty of its sound, that she 
prefers her own child still, while most cheerfully- 
conceding the transcendent merit of others ; and is 
ready to exclaim (as Scott himself said in refer- 
ence to the candidate he proposed at Jedburgh at 
the last election before the Reform Bill), — 

' We hae tried this Border lad, 
And we '11 try him yet again.' 

He is to us the Master of the novel, and the Master 
of the song too. There may be larger and brighter 
suns in other regions of space, — and let those other 
lands glory in and admire them, — but Scott is our 
sun here in the north, and we are content to con- 
tinue to bask in his beams and to rejoice in the 
anniversary of his rising. Other ends may be served 
by the celebration of the great Scotchman's cen- 
tenary, — such as 'the vindicating the true great- 
ness of our national genius and of our national 
character ; the asserting that the language of 
Scotland is not the language of a province but 
of an independent kingdom ; and the resistance or 
modification of that centralizing tendency which 
is sucking in the Scotch manners and literature, 
and all that is Scotch, into our southern Mael- 
strom. Not very long ago we remarked to an 
English Dissenting clergyman of great eminence, 



THE COMING CENTENARY. 383 

how England had so many large towns. His 
.reply was, ' Yes, sir ; England's one vast city 
turning, and Scotland is our pleasure-ground! We 
must go, we thought, and inform our gardeners of 
this. When Queen Caroline threatened to turn 
Scotland into a hunting-field on account of its 
complicity with the Porteous mob, the Duke of 
Argyle replied, with a low bow, ' Then, Madam, I 
must go north and get my hounds ready.' 

With regard to the manner of a celebration, for 
which there exist such strong and various rea- 
sons, we need only say, to be worthy of Scott, it 
must be carefully pondered, and not spoiled by 
undue hurry or enthusiasm. The details, as well 
as the general programme, must be thoroughly 
digested ere they are presented to the public. 
While national, it should be of a most catholic 
character ; and the memory of the Minstrel should 
on that occasion be severed, even in idea, from all 
petty associations and political or religious pre- 
judices. It should be imposing and splendid in 
its circumstances, but without an atom of sensa- 
tionalism. It should be connected, as we believe 
it is to be connected, with some permanent insti- 
tution, — some bursary or fund which may, perad- 
venture, encourage and educate future Scotts, if 
there be virtue in the coming ages to produce such 



3S4 



WALTER SCOTT. 



prodigies ; it should be, in short, a celebration which 
shall not only attract but enrich the eyes of the 
whole world, express worthily cosmopolitan grati- 
tude and admiration, and be such as the benignant 
but solemn shade of the departed himself may 
regard with pride and complacency. 




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given us a book over which, in the curious incidents and noble struggles 
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higher lesson than is suggested even by the renowned career of the hero 
of Trafalgar.' — News of the Churches. 

Second Edition, 

The History of Moses and his Times : Viewed in 

connection with Egyptian Antiquities. By the Eev. Thornley 
Smith, author of ' The History of Joseph.' Beautifully Illustrated, 
crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

' Presents the results of careful and extensive reading in a pleasant 
and interesting form.' — Evangelical Magazine. 

' Forms an admirable companion to the " Pentateuch. " ' — Literary 
Churchman. 

2 



Second Edition, 

The History of Joshua : Viewed in connection with 

the Topography of Canaan and the Customs of the Times. By the 
Eev. Thornley Smith. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

4 It is practically a commentary, and a very intelligently illustrative 
one, on the whole Book of Joshua ; and, as being designed for popular 
use, is more attractive in form than a direct exposition could have been.' 
— Nonconform ist. 

A Book for Governesses. By One of Them. In f cap. 

8vo, price 2s. 6d. 
1 We recommend this little book for governesses to all whom it may 
concern. It is a healthy, sensible, and invigorating work, — likely to 
strengthen the hands and inspire the hearts of young governesses with a 
cheerful view of their labour, and a respect for themselves, which is a 
wholesome element in all work.' — Athenaeum. 

William Farel y and the Story of the Swiss Reforma- 
tion. By the Eev. Wm. M. Blackburn, author of ' Young Calvin 
in Paris,' etc. Crown 8vo, with Frontispiece, price 3s. 6d. 

' This book is almost a model of what popular biographies should be. 
" It ought to be put into the hands of our young people, that they may 
learn how the Beformation was won, and how great a godly consecrated 
man " may be.' — English Independent. 

' Its facts are grouped so skilfully, and its scenes portrayed so vividly, 
that it equals in interest any romance.' — Literary World. 

' We have read it with intense satisfaction, and commend it with all 
possible earnestness to young and old.' — Christian Witness. 

The Family Circle. By the Rev. A. Morton, Eclin- 

burgh. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. 

Contents.— Part I.—l. Home. 2. The Husband. 3. The Wife. 4. 
The Father. 5. The Mother. 6. The Child. Part II.— I. The Family 
Circle in Prosperity. 2. The Family Circle in Adversity. 3. The Family 
Circle Dispersed. 4. The Family Circle in the Grave. 5. The Family 
Circle in Eternity. 

' The reverend writer of this volume explains in a very wise and 
tender manner the relative duties and rights of the members of families. 
The essentials of a real home are clearly and feelingly defined.' — Critic. 

' This is a volume of unquestionable merit. We have rarely perused 
a work upon the subject so full of deeply important truth, expressed in 
language of mingled power and pathos.' — Glasgow Herald. 

Clifford Castle : A Tale of the English Reformation. 

By Mrs. Mack AY, author of ' The Family at Heatherdale,' etc. 
Crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. 

' A very superior work, full of graphic touches and interesting epi- 
sodes.' — Bible Class Magazine. 

3 



NEW BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG 

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. 

Just published, 

The Wish and the Way ; or, Passages in the Life of 

Kose Burgoyne. By Mrs. Meldrum, Author of ' The Diamond 
Wreath ; or, the Price of a Soul.' Crown 8 vo. With Illustrations. 
5s. 

Just published, 

The German Drummer Boy ; or, The Horrors of War. 

From the French. By Mrs. Campbell Overend. In foolscap. 
With Illustrations. 2s. 

Just out, 

AT ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE EACH. 

A tint Mabel's Prayer. By Mrs. Henderson, Aitthor 

of 'Steps in the Dark.' 

The Exiles of France. By A. R. Hope Moncriejf, 

Author of 'Mr. Leslie's Stories,' 'The Martyr Shepherd,' etc. 

Stories of the Italian Reformers. From the French. 

By Mrs. Campbell Overend. 

Martin the Weaver ; or, The Power of Gold. From 

the French. By Mrs. Campbell Overend. 

Each Book has Three Fine Illustrations. 

AT ONE SHILLING EACH. 

The Pet Lamb. By the Author of ' The Basket of 

Flowers.' 

The Young A rtist. By the same A uthor. 
The Easter Eggs. By the same A uthor. 
The Stolen Child. By the same Author. 

. Each Book has a Beautiful Frontispiece. 

AT SIXPENCE EACH. 

Blanche Gamond : A Heroine of the French Refor- 

mation. By the Kev. E. B. Blyth. 

Little Blue Mantle. From the French. By Mrs. 

Campbell Overend. 

Each Book has a Beautiful Frontispiece. 

EDINBURGH : WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. 

4 



Recently published, in crown 8vo, price 5s., 

THOMAS CHALMERS: 

A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. 
By JAMES DODDS, Esq., 

AUTHOR OF 'THE FIFTY YEARS' STRUGGLE OF THE SCOTTISH COVENANTERS. 



'A useful and well-timed book.' — Atkenaeum. 

' The writer has seized with remarkable ability the salient points in 
his hero's character; and although the portrait is in miniature, it is 
thoroughly effective.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 

' A well-written and affectionate biography. Mr. Dodds has shown 
commendable industry, loving his hero without making an idol of him.' 
— Publishers' Circular. 

' It contains a graphic account of a very remarkable man, written in a 
manly style, and none the worse for being enthusiastic' — The Daily News. 

' He presents a vivid sketch of Chalmers in the principal events and 
actions of his life, and accompanies this with graphic, often eloquent, 
estimates of his character and wonderful powers.' — Daily Review. 

' It is a very readable and informing book.' — The Literary World. 

1 The book presents us with a most lovable picture of Chalmers 
throughout almost every page. It is a book that will please all who 
knew Chalmers — and all who knew him love him — by its keen apprecia- 
tion and exhibition of his works and virtues; it will inspire all who are 
here introduced to him with earnest admiration, and a desire to know 
more of a character so amiable and remarkable.' — The Scotsman. 

'We should think that young readers will be grateful to Mr. Dodds; 
he has certainly provided them with a very charming book. Older 
readers, too, who may not have access to Dr. Hanna's work will do well 
to avail themselves of this convenient volume.' — The Watchman and 
Wesley an Advertiser. 

'We have read this book through and through with unflagging inter- 
est and high delight. . . . Mr. Dodds has executed his task in a most 
masterly way. He writes with a living sympathy for his hero, yet with 
a discriminating judgment.' — Homilist. 

'Mr. Dodds's volume is full of interest, and will be read with delight 
even by those who have read and re-read Dr. Hanna.' — Reformed Pres- 
byterian Magazine. 

'Mr. Dodds's book is interesting, enthusiastic, and well written.' — 
Nonconformist. 

'The aims and labours of his life are well brought out; and light 
especially is thrown upon his two favourite purposes, — that of bringing 
the gospel preached in a free church to bear upon the whole population 
of a country, and that of dealing in a true Christian spirit with pauper- 
ism.' — Presbyterian. 

Edinburgh: W. OLIPHANT & CO.. 



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